Sexuality, And Race In Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy

Lea Vincent
Professor Hayles
English 226
12 March 2023
Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy Navigating a foreign place with high hopes is no easy feat for Lucy in Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Lucy, titled after the unyielding main character. Thrust into a cold gray world at nineteen, Lucy is forced to confront her internal conflicts of culture and upbringing as well as the conflicting ways she is viewed in society. Much like many immigrants, Lucy’s life becomes filled with new highs and lows, diverging from the path laid out before her. She struggles at first to find how she fits into her new life not relating much to the American culture. Gilbert H. Muller summarizes this experience well in Promised Land: Postwar Fiction and

Lucy almost immediately asserts that these relationships are on her terms; she seldom holds back when moved to speak, occasionally leaving Mariah speechless by airing just how differently they operate and view the world. One such time is when Mariah shows her daffodils, Lucy asks, “Mariah, do you realize that at ten years of age, I had to learn by heart a long poem about some flowers I would not see in real life until I was nineteen,”( Kincaid 31). What Mariah has grown to see as beautiful Lucy sees as a reminder of her past twisted and tormented by the godly ideals of a ruling country she may never see. At just nineteen years old she is placed into so many categories that don’t fully encompass her being, she is seen through a simple lens of service rather than the complex individual she is. Caretaker, confidant, visitor, lover, these words hardly begin to describe

She attempts to connect to Lucy in many ways, showing her the daffodils, and telling Lucy of her so-called “Indian blood”(Kincaid 40), a claim many make to justify their appropriation and disrespect of indigenous cultures, Lucy’s included. Despite being employed by Mariah, Lucy maintains much of her autonomy, much like what is suggested by Tendayi Sithole in The Concept of the Black Subject in Fanon stating; “The Black subject exists in exclusionary structures of reality, which renders the existence of such a subject non-existence… The Black subject must wage [her] own struggle and refrain from being controlled by the liberal ethos,”(27). Lucy and Mariah’s dynamic remains true until the end of the novel when Mariah tightens her hold on Lucy as her employer, their ever-fluctuating relationship is one of intersecting race, culture, and