Allen Reid

12/11/09

Essay 1.

Feminism in Postcolonial Studies

            This class gave me a greater understanding of literary theory. I enjoyed reading Kasi Hlavaty’s final exam from 2001. Even though I never studied feminism theory, I really got a better understanding of how it works in this class on colonial and post colonial literature. Kasi seems to have been well informed on the subject and I really picked up a few interesting ideas. One idea was feminism and how it applied to Robinson Crusoe. I was prepared to discuss feminism in my final, but this was not one of the two texts that I had planned on talking about. However, after reading Kasi’s final I see how that theory works in the text. I did not plan on discussing it because the novel did not have female characters. Kasi presented the idea that the island, the land, was Mother Nature, hence female; and Robinson Crusoe was there raping the land. I really enjoyed her idea of the plough and the land, just that imagery and the idea of Crusoe raping the land is intense reading.

            I see Robinson Crusoe   as more of a colonial text. And I Lucy and Jasmine  as post colonial text. Friday is the typical colonial subject who is glad to be colonized. He learns the language of the colonizer and accepts Crusoe’s religion (except for the part about the powerful, evil devil). Through dialogue and narrative the reader perceives the notion that Crusoe, the European, is greater than the savage native. Crusoe is shown to be possessive and not very receptive to the ideas of the cannibals. He is quick to tell Friday the difference between right and wrong.

            When we read Lucy, I saw a different character from Friday. Whereas, Friday was eager to receive knowledge from his master, Lucy was not. Lucy perceived the way Mariah wanted everyone around her to see things the way she did. Mariah wanted everyone to experience her childhood beach house the same way that she had done, paying close detail to every sound and smell, every crack and nook. Lucy said that the children were glad to see things the way she did, but Lucy would not.

            Lucy also refused to allow any man to have any control over her. Whenever her first lover got the idea that he had taken her virginity, she lied to him and said that she was not a virgin. She did not want to give anyone that kind of power over her she said. Lucy is taking charge over her sexuality. She chooses her sexual partners and discards them as she pleases. Paul was certainly presented to be like a colonizer she said “Paul spoke of the great explores who had crossed the great seas” Kincaid associate Paul with the great explores because Paul too wants to control Lucy like the explores wanted to control the natives  (Lucy 129). “That was the moment he got the idea he possessed me in a certain way, and that was the moment I grew tired of him” (Lucy 155). Lucy was talking about a moment when Paul gave her a picture he had of her naked from the waist up and only covered from the waist down with a piece of cloth. In the picture she is cooking Paul’s dinner. It is that image that she wants to pull away from. It is an image of her as a sex object and a domestic figure. This is the post colonial image that she wants to break away from, and be her own self.

            In Jasmine we see feminist theory at work too. The original village that Jasmine comes from is Hasnapur. It is a village that is very patriarchal and oppresses women. Whenever she marries Prakash she is breaking away from this tradition that deems to make women baby factories. However, her marriage to Prakash is still patriarchal. Prakash expects Jasmine, as he names her, to support him in whatever he does. He expects her to be the woman behind the man. When Jasmine becomes Jane, the live in exotic girl friend, she once again finds that she is restrained by the idea of devotion. She feels the need of staying to care for her crippled boyfriend and their soon to be baby. It is only when she decides to leave Bud and go to California to be with Taylor does she free herself of patriarchy.