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Intertextuality as Colonial Resistance

Governesses and Daffodils in Jamaica Kincaid’s

Lucy: A Novel

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Introduction: Intertextuality and the Colonial Hegemony

Intertextuality can be a way of resisting colonial hegemony by fighting fire with fire.1 Postcolonial

writers can liberate minds from the hegemony of the curriculum of Empire by engaging, rewriting

and retelling canonical texts. Jamaica Kincaid’s writings are excellent examples of how literature

seeks to reclaim the literary tradition and reinvent it through the canonical provisions of Empire.

Intertextuality in Caribbean literature offers the means by which writers can settle the score and

liberate themselves from the epistemic violence committed by the educational system.2 Such

writers can draw on the arsenal of texts from the colonial educational system, and the canon can

be turned upside down to represent a rebellion against the hegemony. Hence, Jane Eyre can

become an example of young Caribbean girls’ struggle to reclaim and redefine their identities in

their own way and thereby become independent. In the same way, Wordsworth’s poetry can be

rewritten as a testimony to the epistemic violence of forced memorisation of poems about, what

Ian Smith calls, “absent things” such as daffodils (Smith 806). In other words, Wordsworth’s poetry

becomes a metaphor for the epistemic violence itself, as the dislike of the daffodils exemplifies a

deep and inner dislike or ambivalence towards the hegemonic state. Literature can express these

1 Graham Allen’s work Intertextuality takes the reader through a history of the term rather than giving a single

universal definition. However, he does say about intertextuality that it “reminds us that all texts are potentially plural, reversible, open to the reader’s own presuppositions, lacking in clear and defined boundaries, and always involved in the expression or repression of the dialogic ‘voices’ which exist within society.” (209) It was this thought which led me on the quest to discover the intertextual elements in Lucy and what they meant for the novel. In my view, intertextuality is as much a way of reading as it is a way of writing. This is why Lucy can also be read without the intertextual frame. In this paper intertextuality emerges as the clues and hints, such as Jane Eyre and Wordsworth (which will be dealt with in this paper) and Paradise Lost (which must remain a story for another day), which honestly and lovingly reclaim the canon for Postcolonial writers. 2 In ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ Gayatri Spivak exemplifies epistemic violence as “the remotely orchestrated, far-flung

and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as Other.” (281) Further on she suggests “[p]erhaps it is no more than to ask that the subtext of the palimpsestic narrative of imperialism be recognized as ‘subjugated knowledge’, ‘ a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task… it is… to offer an account of how an explanation and narrative of reality was established as the normative one.’(281) I read this as the attempt by the colonizer to implant the colonial culture onto the colonised. The colonial educational system emerges as an excellent example of how to do this.

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feelings and, by way of intertextual elements, step into governesses’ skirts and battle daffodils

head on.

This paper explores how intertextuality in Kincaid’s Lucy: A Novel (1990) is put to use

to express resistance towards the mental colonisation which the colonial educational system

induces. I aim to provide a concrete example of how intertextuality figures in such postcolonial

literature. Homi Bhabha points out that “the indeterminacy of intertextuality [...] can be deeply

engaged in the postcolonial struggle against dominant relations of power and knowledge.” (The

Location of Culture 48) Also, it is my experience that great focus has been directed at the

resistance in Lucy as one of a brutal, forceful push, which can be read from the character of Lucy’s

hostility towards the world. Yet, this paper also views the intertextuality of Lucy as a gentle and

affectionate shove, and thus homage, as well as resistance to the canon.

This paper will argue that the resistance and critique of the English canon in Kincaid’s

intertextuality is not towards the teaching of the English canon, but rather towards the way it was

taught. Lucy contains several examples of intertextuality both in the form of a direct reference to

William Wordsworth’s 1804 poem ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ and in the form of more indirect

use of the governess novel, especially Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre (1847). Kincaid was raised on

these texts. And she exploits how the governess state as an in-between character can be refitted

to shed light on an in-between state experienced in the Caribbean. The character of Lucy is in

many ways a role of in-betweenness: she is a Caribbean – a product of a mixed people and British

education; she is nineteen years old on the threshold between adulthood and childhood; she is an

au pair, the modern day governess, living between the family and the servants. Furthermore,

having been educated in the British tradition, Lucy has a knowledge about the metropolis seen

from her Caribbean and particularly rebellious view point. Lucy recognises the cornerstones of

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Western culture,3 but, as she comes face to face with them and has an utterly different

background, they mean something different to her than to characters that embody these

cornerstones. She is hostile towards things which to other characters are held in high esteem and

thus taken for granted to be symbols of spring and newness, such as daffodils. But for Lucy, the

daffodils are a trauma. Through the novel’s link with Victorian governess novels she recognises the

feminist resistance they hold and their particular usefulness for her. And through the direct

intertextuality with Wordsworth she narrates the impact the colonial literary hegemony had on

her: an impact which led her to hate something she had never even seen.

As I begin, I must reflect on Kincaid’s thoughts on being “an educated black person”

(Bonetti). Here her relationship with her own history becomes relevant. Lucy seeks liberation from

the colonising of her mind, and Lucy’s desire to kill and eradicate from her memory the daffodils

and her willingness to offer Mariah her history suggests this (19). However, Kincaid is not so ready

to part with her history:

I’m very much against people denying their history. There was an attempt, successful, by English colonization to make a certain kind of person out of me and it was a success, it worked, it really worked. My history of domination culturally in all the ways it has existed is true...I do not spend my present time trying to undo it... My history is that I came from African people who were enslaved and dominated by European British people and that is it. And there is no attempt to erase it. (qtd in Simmons 67)

3 A rather empty term I think, but for lack of better I must settle on this. It is difficult to refer to the culture in mind as

the imperial as the novel takes place in America, but the elements the novel takes on are near universal for the Western culture. By that I mean the sentiments about daffodils expressed by Mariah, as an American, are found also in Britain, the originating country of I ‘Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’.

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By accepting her own colonial history, Kincaid gains access to the command of knowledge and

texts she can use to write about the Caribbean. Kincaid generously uses her own personal

experiences as well as fictional ones to describe how the colonial educational system is creating an

in-between space for the colonised to live in. This is a space in-between the reality of being a

colonial subject and the fantasy of belonging to an England to which they never really were

allowed to belong. Ultimately these reflections lead to the question of intertextuality as resistance

to the colonial hegemony: if postcolonial authors can claim the canon and turn it towards working

not for colonisation as it did in the colonial educational system, then it can work for decolonisation

as I argue here it does for Kincaid. As Kincaid claims her right to the pieces she was taught in

school, she illustrates for us how the canon can be an armoury ripe for productive appropriation.

Kincaid acknowledges her in-between state, and her hybridity as a mix of ambiguity

and clarity. Bhabha defines hybridity as “the construction of cultural authority within conditions of

political antagonism or inequity.” Furthermore, he points out that hybridity “makes possible the

emergence of an ‘interstitial’ agency that refuses the binary representation of social antagonism.”

(‘Culture’s In-Between’ 58) Elsewhere, Bhabha argues that “the importance of hybridity is not to

be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity ... is the

‘third space’ which enables other positions to emerge.” (‘The Third Space’ 211) In other words,

hybridity emerges as a productive space. As Kincaid rids herself of the fantasy of England and sees

clearly the place she is from, Kincaid opens her eyes to the power of hybridity as we see in an

interview with Kay Bonetti:

I feel free to use everything, or not, as I choose. I was forced to memorize John Milton and that was a very painful thing. But I’m not going to make myself forget John Milton because it

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involves a painful thing. I find John Milton very beautiful, and I’m glad that I know it. I’m sorry that the circumstances of how I got to know it were so horrid, but, since I know it, I know it and I claim every right to use it. (Bonetti)

As she accepts her history as a colonial subject repressed under the ideas and daffodils of England,

a very painful thing becomes something very useful. And she turns epistemic violence into

epistemic power. Her remembrance of memorising Milton mirrors Lucy’s experience of seeing

daffodils for the first time; they are something which invokes sorrow and pain within Lucy, yet she

is glad to know them, to have had them identified (Lucy 30). To know a part of what made her.

From this one can draw how intertextuality here is both homage and resistance. In the same sense

Julie Mullaney quotes Claire Harris in ‘The Canon and Postcolonial Literature’ to make the point of

illustrating the complexity of the colonial education by arguing that even though the system was

designed “’to produce a fully colonised subject’” (35) the other side contributed with an intimacy

with the classics and thereby “’a sense of great beauty [and] possibility in language...’” (35). Or, as

Kincaid says about the literature she was taught in school: “I got stuck with a lot of things, so I

ended up using them.” (Bonetti)

In his article ‘Misusing Canonical Intertexts: Jamaica Kincaid, Wordsworth and

Colonialism's "Absent Things"’, Ian Smith argues that, like the creolisation of languages, engaging

with the colonial canon opens up a way of resisting the colonial hegemony by way of “mis”using

the canon: “Misuse becomes the classic gesture of creolization, of intertextuality West Indian

style, where the English ‘standard,’ whether the language or canonical texts, is adapted, taken

over, re-contextualized, barbarized and reproduced to meet the current needs of a people shaped

through a historical process of interculturation.” (806) In other words, by relating the literature of

the coloniser to the situation of the colonised the intertexts are woven into something new that

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works for the colonised’s resistance rather than for the colonising mission. It is in the light of this

the significance of Kincaid using the things she “got stuck with” from school emerges. As Smith

argues, intertextuality in Kincaid “represents a set of reading, writing and analytical practices that

constantly seeks to redefine the parameters and legitimacy of the colonial interpretant”.

(818)Thus it is in this redefinition of parameters and legitimacy we find the resistance. Arguably,

according to Smith it seems a deliberate tactic of Kincaid’s. The question, then, is whether or not

this is intentionally done by postcolonial literature? I argue that this is not so significant, since as

John Thieme argues, the “con-texts” of postcolonial engagement with the canon questions “the

hegemonic status” of British literature and by extension the colonial educational system as a

whole. Inevitably this places the foundation of the colonial mission on shaky grounds (2). In

addition, Smith argues that literature’s engagement with the canon, or, in other words,

intertextuality, provides means by which the Empire erodes, or as he writes, “for the de-scribing of

empire”. In my analysis of the governess element in Lucy, one can see this notion of a system

being questioned mirrored in the ambivalent threat the governess poses to Victorian society.

The Governess and Resistance, Jane Eyre and Lucy

If one attempts to map the significance of the governess one finds that the governess in Victorian

England held a ‘peculiar position’ (Lecaros 13). On the one hand, she was a lady in a time when a

proper lady was defined as “the angel in the house”. On the other hand, she was forced by

necessity to venture into the labour market. The governess’ paradoxical state of being a lady who

manoeuvres the patriarchal realm by performing the woman’s mission challenged the system

(Lecaros 197). She moves in a state of being in-between male and female and thus questions

gender roles, and “the boundaries of the female sphere” (197). Furthermore, her position of being

in-between was also stated in her being the equal of her employers in “’birth, manner and

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education, but [...]’ nonetheless she was paid to work for them.” (20) As the governess takes on

paid labour, she exposes not just the failure of her patriarch but also the shortcomings of society

as the question “what place are they to hold[?]...” (20) lingers. In a postcolonial perspective, the

question of place and space of the governess can be compared to Bhabha’s notion of the stairwell

as the liminal space of cultural hybridity. The space is the in-between which connects and

constructs the binary differences and “opens up the possibility of cultural hybridity that entertains

difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy...” (The Location of Culture 5). Thus if the

governess connects the binaries and renders unimportant the hierarchical distinctions between

them, she holds an immense and dangerous power towards the class system comparable to the

power Bhabha argues the Other holds regarding the colonial system.

The colonisation of the Other, in this case women, is perfomed through texts and

education. It is the educational system which teaches both the colonised and women how to

position themselves in a social context: below the white patriarch. The woman is made an Other in

the same way as the colonised. However, where the colonised male is Othered due to his race, the

woman is due to her gender.4 Rather than being “not quite/not white” she is “not quite/not male”

(Spivak 177). Considering both the case of women and writing and the colonial Other we see a

colonisation which takes place in the “home”, either the domestic sphere of the woman or the

colonial sphere of the colonised. Women’s colonising happened in the home -the female sphere,

and likewise was the colonial education system a colonisation in the home –where they lived. The

results are a stirring anxiety about doubles both in the colony regarding the mimic and the double

of “the angel in the house”. The colonial anxiety is related to the civilising mission of the colonial

educational system encouraging mimicry the effect of which Jacques Lacan describes as

4 This further complicates matters for the non-white woman, who thus suffers a double colonisation. This double

colonisation of Lucy empowers Kincaid’s use of Jane Eyre as Lucy is subjected to colonization in both categories.

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camouflage (qtd in The Location of Culture 121). In Bhabha’s ‘Of Mimicry and Man’ the mimic man

is defined as being “almost the same, but not quite” (The Location of Culture 123) because being

“Anglicized is emphatically not to be English.” (125) The benefit of mimicry is that it is “a complex

strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which ‘appropriates’ the Other as it visualizes

power.” (122) Achieved also by means of the educational system as it builds the myth of

Englishness adopting the colonial subjects into this myth as a form of control in the sense that

they are taught to long for England, but alas! They are “’not quite/not white’” (131). Even though

the colonising of people’s minds through, as I have argued here, the means of literature is

effective in creating a sense of nostalgia about the metropolis of the colonial power, it also has a

side effect: the colonial gaze. As the colonial powers gaze over their subjects, Bhabha argues the

subjects gaze back and leave the observer as the observed (127). The resemblance mimicry

produces is also a menace in the form of knowledge (122-123) which could be used against the

colonisers.

Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre represents the feminist gaze as her in-between situation

in Thornfield allows her to observe her supposed equal superiors at a party. Kincaid’s Lucy holds

this position as well at a house party her host family entertains. Their situations are identical as

both women are there to care for the children, and they are granted access to the parties. Like

Jane, Lucy is able to view the guests and exist among them without being seen herself (Simmons

72). Underestimated as merely “the girl”, both she and Jane are able to make observations about

the superficiality of the friends of the families (Brontë 162, Lucy 58). In one view, their position

becomes one of privilege as Lucy’s (and Jane’s) “’privileged standpoint as an outsider within . . .

allows the reader to see particular truths or realities that are not apparent to someone more fully

assimilated into dominant ideologies’” (qtd in Nichols 189). In support, Bhabha suggests “the

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truest eye may in fact belong to the migrant’s double vision” (The Location of Culture 7-8) and

both Jane and Lucy posses this double vision, as they, like the migrant, stand in-between old and

new. In spite of their suffering, Jane and Lucy’s in-between position and double vision allows them

to see through the spheres they move in and both women remain on the edge of the room

observing (Brontë 159-162) almost as if they can stare into the souls of people. Aditonally, Bhabha

argues it is the “double vision which... also disrupts [the colonial] authority.” (The Location of

Culture 126) Furthermore, “in order to be effective mimicry must continually produce its ...

difference.” (122) A difference which is effective in pointing out how the colonised is “not quite”

like the coloniser but in its process it “visualizes power” and establishes ambivalence

(122).Therefore, the colonised mimic and his/her gaze become uncanny (unheimlich) as s/he

makes the familiar unfamiliar.

Another aspect of the uncanny Other in the home is the idea of a person in the home

making the home unhomely (The Location of Culture 13-15). As the governess possesses both the

actual and metaphoric stairwells of the home, she is let in on the secrets of the home and has the

power to turn the homely unhomely. In other words, she can make the private public. Thus like

the Other holds power in the form of knowledge so too does the governess, and her presence in

the home thus becomes menacing and uncanny. Therefore, the anxiety which revolves around the

education of colonial subjects, and quite literally putting the knowledge of the power holder into

the colonised’s heads can be detected in literature. Hence, John Reed striking little Jane with a

book accusing her of having overstepped her boundaries and gaining knowledge can be read as a

futile attempt to retract that knowledge(Brönte 6). Since, the observed becomes the observer and

the uncanny double of the coloniser, the question surfaces of whether or not that knowledge will

be turned against them. This is indicated by Gauri Viswanathan, in her study of literature and

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British rule in India, Masks of Conquest (1989)5, when she argues that the “depicting [of] the

natives as irrational, inscrutable, unstable and volatile doomed British rulers to inhabiting an

imagined, dreaded world of imminent rebellion and resistance.” (11) This is an idea which is

perceived in the planning of “defensive mechanisms of control” (10). However, the colonisers

cannot, anymore that John Reed could, retract the knowledge already in the minds of the

colonised. Therefore, knowledge emerges as a sword-like power (Gilbert and Gubar 6) and is

suggested in Kincaid’s resolve of using everything she was taught as a child. Turning to the double

of “the angel in the house” as discussed in Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic. The

Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (2000), opposite of “the angel in

the house” we discover the monster; the woman who writes and spins stories, the potential

lurking within the angel. In other words, the threatening double of “the angel in the house” is a

double who, instead of dying or nursing the dying might in fact cause death (26). Within the

woman lives the possibility of being “ghost, fiend and angel, fairy, witch and sprite” (qtd 18) at the

same time. Furthermore, beneath the surface of the colonised and the woman lurks an anger as

we see both in the uncontrollable rage of Jane,6 “something spoke out of me” (21) and in the

similar rage of Lucy (96).

While these problems generate plenty of inspiration and themes for the governess

novel, the journey of the governess protagonist to maturity is also in great focus. As she finds

herself in an in-between position, she struggles, usually, with an unforgiving and hostile household

(Lecaros 37-38). The trials and the struggles she goes through compare to the Bildungsroman, and

like the male hero of that genre the governess finds herself alone in a strange household where

5 Though this work deals with India examples of literature as colonial rule also apply to other colonial and once

colonized settings. 6 Consider also the character of Bertha, the hidden, madwoman, monster/ghost-like wife whom Gilbert and Gubar

argue is Jane’s double. She is both the colonial hybrid and the female other.

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she neither belongs with the family nor the servants (35). In Jane Eyre we see how the young

protagonist combats one struggle after the other before she finally achieves maturity and

independence. Jane’s quest towards independence starts with a tantrum as a rebellion towards

the injustice of being left out of the class system to which she feels she belongs (Simmons 75).

Likewise do we see a quest for independence in Lucy, as the protagonist here also goes through a

time of servitude in the form of modern day governessing as an au pair. Both Jane and Lucy go to

families who live comfortably and are treated as equals by their benevolent employers, but not by

friends of the family such as Dinah in Lucy and Blanche Ingram in Jane Eyre. They are patronised

and reduced to “the girl” (Kincaid 58). Though there is a difference in the suffering Jane and Lucy

share (Simmons 82-85), their relationships with their primary masters, Rochester and Mariah, are

quite similar. Another way in which equality between employer and employee comes to show is

exemplified in the level of intimacy shared between the two couples. For instance, as Gilbert and

Gubar point out, Rochester’s sharing of his sexual conquests (Brontë 122-127) with Jane is “a kind

of acknowledgement of Jane’s equality with him.” (Gilbert and Gubar 354-355) As he shares the

story of his “grande passion” (Brontë 123) with Jane, he is accepting her confidence on equal

terms. Thus the manner in which Rochester accepts Jane into his confidence makes Jane feel easy

around him, and Rocherster’s “friendly frankness” allows Jane to feel that “he [is her] relation

rather than [her] master” (128). Moreover, Rochester and Jane’s shared confidence and easy

manner is mirrored in Lucy. Lucy and Mariah sit at the kitchen table sharing sexual experiences

and trouble, which makes their relationship one that exceeds the mere employer/employee level

(Lucy 113). Yet, while Lucy begins to see Mariah as a surrogate mother, Jane falls in love with

Rochester. As Lucy begins to compare Mariah to her own mother, she explains that she both loves

and does not love Mariah because she reminds Lucy of her mother (58). The bond of mother-

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daughterly friendship Lucy forms with Mariah links the two novels together in the way that both

relationships exceed that of mere Master/Servant.

Another similarity is the nature by which the two women seek to be liberated from

their current positions and the expectations of others. Jane wishes to be free from the isolation

she has lived in at her time at Lowood (Brönte 73) and she desires to seek her fortune beyond the

horizon she can see from her window (72-73). In spite of apparently having no claim to the class

she inhabits, Jane does not consider herself to be outside of it; she is being excluded, but she

renders it unjust (17-19). Jane does not wish to be poor, and she admits to herself that she “was

not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste” (19), suggesting that in spite of being

told she is less than a servant, she still feels some entitlement to class. Jane wishes to reinstate

herself in her rightful place in the class system. Lucy, on the other hand, wishes to liberate herself

from her mother, and as she travels to America to work as an au pair, she decides to cut off all

contact with her mother (Lucy 115,128). We learn that her plan to work as an au pair while

studying at night to become a nurse is an ambition of her mother’s: “I can just see you in your

nurse’s uniform. I shall be very proud of you.” (93) We are not given the impression in the novel

that this is Lucy’s wish, but rather something appointed to her. Both Lucy and Jane wish to invent

themselves free of the expectations of their surroundings, exemplified when Lucy is confronted

with a woman whom Lucy’s mother adores and wants Lucy to be like and whom Lucy hates (111-

112). When remembering this woman, Lucy immediately feels the desire to resist and rid herself

of any possibility of becoming like this woman (112).

Both Jane and Lucy manage to escape their repressors and make their own way, but

with some differences. Jane Eyre has a fairytale ending which culminates in Jane inheriting a

fortune and marrying her master. However, whereas Jane is the procurer of fairytale, Lucy exposes

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the fantasy of fairytale. Lucy is quick to catch on to the beginning of the end of Mariah and Lewis’

marriage and anticipates Mariah’s happiness will crumble (87-88). Simmons argues:

For Brontë, a fairytale is the solution; for Kincaid it is the problem. In Brontë’s world the fairytale is used to lift the powerless; it represents a leap of faith, the belief that the righteous downtrodden will be restored to their rightful positions. In Kincaid’s world, where the chief fairytale... has been the story of British brilliance and superiority over its colonised peoples, the magical tale bedazzles the powerless and keeps them in paralyzed subjugation. (82)

Thus, the fairytale theme is representative of an intertextual comment on the functions of the

colonial educational system. Furthermore, it also offers a suggestion as to how intertextuality can

comment on the hegemony of the British Empire; the construction of a fairytale England as the

mother country can only disappoint the one living under the impressions of these fairytales. As

Kincaid exposes the fairytale of Mariah and Lewis’ marriage and, by the intertextual bond, also

exposes the fairytale of Jane Eyre as simply a fairytale, she seems to reach out to decolonise the

minds of readers. She points out how a fairytale is merely a fantasy and thus the fairytale

constructed around England is not to be trusted. Ironically, Lucy’s own ponderings on fairytales

present them as harmless and not as something which would give a “wrong idea about what to

expect in the world” (45). Simmons does not reflect upon this. However, the context in which this

is uttered is in relation to Mariah’s children, who have all the benefits of culture and race to give

them a fairytale life. In comparison with where Lucy is from, Mariah and her family already live a

fairytale life, and Lucy repeatedly wonders “how does a person get to be that way” (41). Yet,

perhaps, as Mariah’s life begins to crumble, Lucy sees the fantasy of it all and realises that

Mariah’s fairytale life has given Mariah wrong expectations. Also, the homage paid to Jane Eyre in

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Lucy can signify the immense power of fairytales to help us escape from our reality if only for a

moment. Kincaid’s love for Jane Eyre (qtd Simmons 75) suggests that the novel helped Kincaid

escape into a world of fantasy, even if it was just for a moment.

Jane and Lucy go on a quest to find their liberation. Jane goes to Thornfield and Lucy

to America. Lucy’s migration to America rather than England further expresses her need for self-

determination. Rather than choosing to follow in the footsteps of many Caribbean migrants, who

felt they went home when they went to England, she ventures on to a new place (quite literally

the New World). She strives for newness and self-determination in every way and seeks to escape

the clutch of Empire. Through an analysis of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Bhabha suggests

how “the migrant’s survival depends... on discovering how ‘newness enters the world’.” (The

Location of Culture 324) In short, Lucy’s desire for newness and escape from the binaries of Empire

emerges as survival instinct. Furthermore, let us not forget the significance America holds as the

place that resisted and defeated British colonialism in the War of Independence. Lucy follows the

American dream of freedom to be who she wants to be, to be who she sees herself as. Based on

the interview with Bonetti, it does not appear to be random that Lucy went to America:

What good luck it was that I did light out for American territory and not Britain. I do not think that I would have been allowed this act of self-invention, which is very American, in Europe–certainly not in English-speaking Europe. When I came to America, I came from a place where most of the people looked like me, so I wasn’t too concerned with the color of my skin. If I’d gone to England I could only have been concerned with the color of my skin.

In America, then, Kincaid’s skin colour did not seem to be as much in focus as she suspects it

would have been in England. Furthermore, on Lucy’s journey to America she breaks the bonds

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with her parents and the past – the colonial past, and later severs also, however not completely,

the bonds with her employer. Lucy’s choice to remain friends with Mariah (Lucy 144) mirrors

Jane’s return to the now dependent Rochester (Brontë 372-383). In spite of Rochester’s attempt

to illegitimately marry Jane, since he is already married and thus could have ruined forever her

chances of reinstatement within the class she was rejected from, their bond of affection was not

broken (396). Furthermore, Mariah’s reaction of near panic when Lucy declares she wants to leave

(Lucy 141) resembles Rochester’s unwillingness to part with Jane (Brönte 196-199). However, both

relationships have completely changed as Lucy and Jane have each acquired their independence.

Like Jane, Lucy is completely free of her past, and her relationship with her employer has

converted into a relationship of equals.

Beyond these examples of mirroring between the novels, we find how significant

Jane Eyre was for Kincaid as she admits it was one of her favourite novels (Simmons 65). It is not

surprising then that Lucy’s in-between state is not only inspired by Kincaid’s own experiences as

an au pair (Smith 806) but also by the sharp and observant mind of Jane. Kincaid has stated about

Lucy that one of the influences for her mind was indeed Jane (qtd. Simmons 75). By telling Lucy’s

story within the framework of Jane Eyre, Kincaid relates the trials and journey of the figure Jane to

that of the minds of the Caribbean. A connection which works due to the characters’ shared status

of being in-between. As Lucy and Jane seek to liberate themselves from their pasts of oppression

and a potential future of becoming what is deemed appropriate for them to be, Lucy as a nurse,

Jane as a governess, they end up masters of themselves. They escape their respective dominant

ideologies.

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Wordsworth and the Colonial Hegemony

The study of English throughout the Empire proved a valuable method of maintaining British

hegemony in the colonies. Particularly English literature proved useful in its ability to establish

binaries of culture, in the sense that “native” became the antithesis of “home” and civility, and the

“metropolitan” of the “colonial”. These binaries serve the function to divide the coloniser and

colonised into the racial stereotypes which can justify colonial rule. The teaching of English

literature maintained the idea of the superiority of the British Empire and the natural state of their

rule. The literature the colonised was taught was a literature in which all the heroes were white

males. The method was “the programmatic inculcation of works like ‘I Wandered Lonely as a

Cloud’”, which “[...] create[d] false memories and identifications, implanting within the student's

mind a desire for daffodils, flowers most had never beheld and many would never see, and an

intimacy with English rituals that most would never be fully allowed to share.” (Smith 813)

Viswanathan exemplifies the attitude to the rule over the native population of India thusly:

“The Natives must either be kept down by a sense of our power, or they must willingly submit from a conviction that we are more wise, more just, more humane and more anxious to improve their condition than any other rulers they could possibly have.” (qtd 2)

In short, “[l]iterature was made as central to the cultural enterprise of Empire as the monarchy

was to its political formation.” (Ashcroft et al 3). Viswanathan further notes the connection

between the discourse of the inferiority of moral and intellect of the colonised and highly

regarded moral and intellectual attributions to the works studied. As a result she argues that the

colonial hegemony was strengthened by the colonial mission of educating and civilising the

colonial subjects in “the literature and thought of England” (2). Furthermore, Bhabha suggests that

18

“the notion of hegemony implies a politics of identification or the imaginary.” (The Location of

Culture 32) It is important, in this context, to note that the study of English literature appeared in

the colonies before becoming a subject of study in the metropolis. Kincaid explains how being

taught British literature staged the fantasy of England:

A sort of desire for a perfect place, a perfect situation... comes from English Romantic poetry. It described a perfection which one longed for, and of course the perfection that one longed for was England. I longed for England myself. These things were a big influence, and it was important for me to get rid of them. Then I could actually look at the place I'm from. (Bonetti)

Kincaid here describes how English Romantic poetry distorted her image of Antigua. If England is

the ideal place and the ideal situation then nowhere else will compare. Thus, the Caribbean

becomes a prison of imperfection in relation the desired. In Wilson Harris’ phrase, in order to

escape that prison you have “to unlearn what [you] ha[ve] learned” (qtd in Wilentz 268). When

you long to be somewhere else, Kincaid is saying, you cannot really see the place where you are.

Hence, England becomes the absent thing which affects her “as if it was present” (qtd Smith 806).

The line comes from Wordsworth’s ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads (1802) which Smith quotes in his

essay in which the poet is described as a man who feels strongly things which are absent as if they

were present. For Kincaid, who herself is in fact a poet, the absent thing is not just the daffodils

but also the fantasy of England as a perfect place. The desire for the perfect England is both what

is absent due to sheer geography but also in the fact that this particular England is fiction.7

7 See for example Wendy Webster’s ‘The Empire Comes Home: Commonwealth Migration to Britain’ in Andrew

Thompson’s book Britain’s Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century (2011) Oxford Scholarship Online, jan – 2011. Webster describes the fantasy of Britain as the home country and the disappointment felt by many colonial (legally British) subjects when they arrived in Britain and experienced the difficulties of, i.e., racism and the fact that they were not perceived as proper Britons.

19

Arguably the quotation seems to suggest that once she stopped yearning for the fiction, when she

realised the colonising in her education, she could understand where she was from, and thus she

could write about it. In the line of fire comes this very fantasy of England. And Kincaid has an

entire armoury of knowledge to draw upon and use when writing about the Caribbean.

When Kincaid describes in Lucy how she as a child was forced to memorise

Wordsworth’s poem ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’, Kincaid, through the voice of Lucy, explains

how this has led her to resent daffodils in spite of never having seen one (Lucy 30). As she makes

clear to us in ‘Plant Parenthood’, for the botany loving Kincaid this has not so much to do with the

aesthetics of the flower, but what the flower represents. Lucy explains to Mariah that “at ten

years of age [she] had to learn by heart a long poem about some flowers [she] would not see until

[she] was nineteen” (30). This is similar to Kincaid’s own reflection of her dislike for the daffodil

“having been forced to memorize a poem about daffodils, when none were to be found in the

place [she] grew up.” (‘Plant Parenthood’ 46). In other words, what fills these women with

resentment is through the teaching of literature, traditions, rituals etc to have been indoctrinated

with a sense of belonging to a place many never had and never would see. For example, about a

conversation on daffodils in Lucy, Jennifer Nichols argues:

The conversation reminds Lucy of a childhood incident in which she was made to memorize and recite Wordsworth’s “Daffodils,” an event that epitomizes for her the relationship of colonizer to colonized, since, in lieu of learning her own history and culture, her education centered on training her to be a good subject of the British Crown. (Nichols198)

In fact, Kincaid did become ‘a good subject of the British Crown’. She became an educated black

person, well versed in the works of the English canon, but also someone who was not needed

20

(Bonetti). Furthermore, what was left out in the colonial educational system was something

“[a]bsent from the poem's discursive colonial function[:...] the figure of the aggressive

masquerading brute of conquest. In its place is ‘the fairy tale of how we met you [the colonizers],

your right to do the things you did, how beautiful you were, and always will be’” (Smith 816). So in

spite of being a seemingly innocent poem about daffodils in the wind (Wordsworth ll. 4-6) the

poem, as well as any piece of literature, becomes far more. To Kincaid the poem represents the

cultural colonisation and production of good civilised subjects who could look up to the coloniser

and recognise their superiority.

The place of colonising draws a parallel with the aspect of Lucy where she does not

just resist the colonisation from without but also from within. Above I discussed the effects of

colonising in the home in relation to the governess, but it also relates to the colonial setting as

home. Because it is in the home that this acceptance of a subsidiary situation and the colonial rule

made natural takes place. In Kincaid’s place it is her home island which takes part in colonising her.

To exemplify, Lucy is not just resisting the daffodils of the new world and her host family, she is

also resisting the daffodils of her home. Lucy battles with her mother who represents Lucy’s home,

and her mother has sided Lucy with the devil because she questions and despises hegemony (Lucy

152-153). As Lucy vows to forget every word of the poem (Lucy 18), she, like Kincaid, begins to see

where she is from. She begins to understand how the “brutes masquerading as angels” (30) have

penetrated the minds of the colonised. It is against these “brutes masquerading as angels” that

Lucy’s mother measures her and defines her as the devil because Lucy recognises daffodils for the

brutes they are. Lucy’s mother can be read as an agent of the coloniser as Lucy feels how her

mother’s love “was designed solely to make me into an echo of her” (36). And Lucy’s mother

cannot fathom why someone who came from her would not want to be like her (36). However,

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Lucy’s rebellious spirit leads her to understand that she “would rather be dead than become just

an echo of someone” (36). This resembles Lucy’s strive for newness and self; her resistance

towards becoming an echo mirrors her resentment of mimicry. In other words, she would rather

perish than mimic. Adding to this is the sense of female resistance against the male patriarch in

Jane Eyre. Jane resists Rochester’s command as she says:

I don’t think... you have the right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience. (117)

Jane’s words suggest that the privilege and responsibility of command is not something mere

circumstance should provide, but the right to command comes from the quality of a person’s

experience. In other words, both Jane and Lucy will make up their own minds on who to follow.

Lucy responds towards the daffodils which are now recognised as a metaphor for

colonial hegemony with hate and rage. When Mariah asks if Lucy has ever seen daffodils (Lucy 18),

it makes Lucy remember the poem and “[being] made to memorize [it]” as a young girl. Here the

choice of words is interesting: the sentence denotes force and resistance as Lucy was “made to”,

or in other words forced to remember it, as part of a school exhibition, but it also denotes destiny.

Lucy was “made to” memorise it. It was her sole purpose at that time to exhibit herself as a

perfect product of the colonial mission. This is further indicated in the audience’s response; the

praise is not given on account of the feeling little Lucy put into reciting the poem. Rather her

pronunciation and placement of emphasis is praised. She is told how proud the long dead poet

would be to hear the words spoken so well (18). In other words, Lucy did a wonderful job

mimicking the British master. However, Lucy resents the feeling of mimicry. On the outside she

22

behaves as she is expected to exhibiting flattery and feigning pleasure, but on the inside she vows

to forget every word of the poem (Lucy 18). She vows to not be a mimic. She feels the repressing

presence of the colonial master and feels suffocated by it. This is further suggested in the dream

Lucy has the following night about daffodils:

I dreamt, continuously it seemed, that I was being chased down a narrow cobbled street by bunches and bunches of those same daffodils that I had vowed to forget, and when finally I fell down from exhaustion they all piled on top of me, until I was buried deep underneath them and was never seen again. (18)

Here we see the daffodils literally suppressing Lucy, cornering her, hunting her and finally burying

her rebellion beneath their might. The seemingly innocent daffodils have hidden agendas of force

and oppression, annihilating anyone who might not conform. This establishes hegemony as an

eerie omnipresence ready to grasp out whenever resistance is detected. And there is no escape.

From this dream it becomes clear that to Lucy the daffodils are not just daffodils, a flower she has

never seen, and the poem about them is not just poetry. When Lucy finally sees ‘real’ daffodils and

before she discovers what they are, she describes them as looking “simple, as if made to erase a

complicated and unnecessary idea.” (29) Even before they have been identified to her, she hates

them and wants to kill them, “cut [them] down at the place where they emerged from the

ground.” (29) Lucy recognises the colonial function of these flowers and the poem about them.

Subconsciously the notion of induced nostalgia about England flows through her mind. Thus, she

realises how the poem about daffodils was taught to her to simplify and make natural British rule.

This fills her with anger. The sense of wanting to kill the flowers is a repetition of wanting to forget

23

the poem, but as she is not reciting poetry but being confronted with the actual flower, her only

option is to kill the flowers.

The question then becomes whether or not Mariah as presenter of the actual

daffodils, in this scene, is an instrument of colonialism. If she is an instrument of colonisation, she

is an unwilling one. This is suggested in Lucy’s understanding of where to direct the blame. She

understands that Mariah wants to share with her something which is dear to Mariah. Lucy is

baffled by Mariah’s ability to be moved by “some flowers bending in the breeze.” (17) She

wonders how “does a person get to be that way?” (17) It is astonishing to Lucy how Mariah’s mind

works and the question resonates throughout the book. When she reacts with rage towards the

daffodils Lucy immediately feels sorry for Mariah, and understands she has shown Mariah a

negative view of her daffodils which might put them in danger of being ruined for her:

I had cast her beloved daffodils in a scene she had never considered, a scene of conquered and conquests; a scene of brutes masquerading as angels and angels portrayed as brutes. . . . It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t my fault. But nothing could change the fact that where she saw beautiful flowers I saw sorrow and bitterness (30)

Lucy recognises the love in Mariah’s desire to share her love for daffodils, but Nichols, however,

does not see it this way. She argues that Mariah’s actions are an attempt to make Lucy conform to

“US feminism (and femininity)” (199), and that the fact that Mariah takes Lucy there blindfolded

suggest a desire to control Lucy’s reaction to the flowers (199). I think to lead someone

blindfolded to what is meant to be a pleasant surprise has very little to do with control, but far

more to do with the desire to make Lucy’s reaction impulsive and genuine. Nichols goes on to

suggest that: “...Kincaid establishes the pro-feminist Mariah’s racism and colonizing tendencies

24

through the daffodil scenes...” (200) In Nichols’ view, then, the daffodil scenes expose Mariah’s

racism and continuation of the colonizing scheme of the British Empire. However, I disagree.

Mariah’s desire to share something which makes her happy with Lucy evidences a lack of

understanding of the forces at work in the colonial educational system - and how could she know?

She herself was brought up with an education which in many ways is the same, though from a

different national perspective, namely the American, one that nonetheless is within the same

Western white tradition. Yet, Lucy’s anger still spurs from some form of blame, and at that very

moment, Lucy blames Mariah for failing to understand how her entire world is build on the

foundations of Lucy’s sorrow and bitterness. Yet, I think the rage goes beyond blame, because

Lucy is simultaneously filled with sadness and frustration as she recognises the importance of the

flowers to Mariah. For Mariah, the flowers represent newness, and Lucy knows this. It is very

possible that Lucy’s anger is fuelled just as much by sorrow that the daffodils was not granted to

her as a symbol of newness. And this is sad. It is sad because as we have learned so far, the

migrant’s survival depends upon how newness enters the world. Instead of bringing a sense of

exclusion, the symbolism of daffodils could have been a strong defence for postcolonial migrants.

It could have been a symbol of them.

The daffodil scenes illustrate well Kincaid’s relationship to her history. The methods

of teaching were painful and traumatic, but the material was not. Kincaid’s use of Jane Eyre

resonates with fondness and admiration for the protagonist, and Lucy stands out as a modern

homage to the Victorian novel: recognition of its feminist implication of resistance to the

patriarchy. From Kincaid’s use of Jane Eyre the reader is presented with a joy for the canon in its

aesthetic value. With the use of Wordsworth a clear line is drawn between the canon in itself and

the methods of the colonial educational system. The imagery of young Jane dreaming of escape

25

while reading a book on birds (Minogue x) only to have the very same book of freedom thrown in

her face (Brontë 6) makes one wonder if Kincaid is striking back at the John Reeds of the world and

defending the dreamers.

Conclusion: Intertextuality and the Postcolonial World

Lucy’s stand becomes the hybrid result of resistance which Bhabha describes (The Location of

Culture 40-41). In the same way Lucy emerges as a hybrid, she neither wants to be part of Mariah’s

world but she will definitely not go back; she has become something new and as a result feels

alone in the world (Lucy 161). Even though it is painful for Lucy and she sometimes struggles with

rejecting her family, particularly her mother, she knows it is worth it to escape her past and the

hegemony her mother represents (Fulani 17). Kincaid makes Jane Eyre work for her purpose as she

makes Lucy her double, and the transformation of Jane into Lucy puts the story of a young girl

striving for independence far beyond the class-based narrative of Jane Eyre. Included in the web of

intertextuality of Lucy are the implications of Victorian female writers and the uncanny shift in

power relations between male and female when the woman starts to spin stories. Indeed, it is the

resistance already written into Jane Eyre which gives Lucy its grounds for rebellion against, as Lucy

exemplifies, the colonial literary hegemony. The intertextual use of Jane Eyre and ‘I Wandered

Lonely as a Cloud’ opens up for a grand narrative of resistance in which the canon ironically helps

to defy the hegemony it first induced. But the presence of Jane Eyre and ‘I Wandered Lonely as a

Cloud’ in Lucy is not only forceful defiance. Behind the resistance lies a deep respect for the works

themselves. Lucy’s loneliness has beauty in it as it signifies a new beginning in which she is free to

mould herself based on her past which is both painful and rich. As Lucy frees herself she can now

use the trauma of the methods employed by the educational system and create something which

is neither resentful of a painful past nor oblivious of it. In fact, in spite of the pain involved with

26

learning Wordsworth there seems also to be a sense of deprivation. Kincaid, like other colonial

subjects, was robbed of the chance to see daffodils in the light of newness. The flowers were

perverted and distorted into an image of hegemony. But this is not the fault of the poem; it is the

fault of the colonial authority. It seems as though Kincaid adopts a rather pragmatic view of the

past as being what it is and chooses to employ it productively and separates the good from the

bad.

The continuously growing list of intertextual works emerging from the postcolonial

world seeks to write back and even rewrite the colonial history from the perspective of the

“colonised mimics”.8 The hybridisation of canonical literature can provide the means for

postcolonial writers to redefine and comment on the colonial mission and resist the epistemic

violence induced by the literary canon as a weapon of force. Therefore, by engaging with the

canon and casting a new light and a different perspective on the narratives, intertextuality

becomes powerful as it makes the reader reengage with the canon and puts a new spin to the

classics. In works like Lucy: A Novel, Jane Eyre is granted with a different side to the governess

novels, and further Lucy, by the reference to ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’, opens the reader’s

eyes to what impact forced memorisation and programmatic inculcations of emotions, false

memories and identifications has on a person. An aspect of the particular intertextuality of Lucy

and its power lies in reading. Lucy can easily be read as a story on its own without knowledge of

the former works. It is an intertextual reading which grants the novel its power of resistance and

homage. This is a reading which is mirrored in the process of creating the character of Lucy, as

Kincaid has admitted to Lucy’s link with Jane we see how Kincaid’s own process of reading is

involved. It is through the process of reading the English canon Kincaid got the opportunity and

8 Such as Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Abdulrazak Gurhna’s Paradise (1994), Caryl Phillips The Nature of

Blood (1997) and Lloyd Jones Mister Pip (2006).

27

inspiration for “mis”-using the canonical texts to partake in colonial resistance. This process of

reading testifies to the immense power of reading and the imagination, and why the ambivalence

towards the English canon is not necessarily only a bad thing. Kincaid admires Jane Eyre and she

uses Jane as a positive character enriching Lucy with the strength of a feminist tradition. With

Wordsworth Kincaid expresses the pain and sorrow involved.The original intent of the colonial

educational system was to make proper British subjects out of the colonised. Today the arsenal of

the canon provides the means to resist, and to reclaim the newness of the daffodils. In the words

of Tiffin and Lawson: “as fire can be fought with fire, textual control can be fought with textuality.”

(10)

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