Young Women Coming of Age in Jamaica

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the two young women who are the subjects of the coming of age novels "Lucy", by Jamaica Kincaid, and "Small Island", by Andrea Levy are complicated characters. The paper compares the main protagonists in the stories and explains that Jamaica Kincaid's novel is told from the perspective of Lucy, the main character in the novel, and focuses only on Lucy's, as seen from her own perspective. The paper then looks at how in "Small Island", the character of Hortense is contextualized more fully, with the perspective and history of her husband, her landlady and her landlady's husband also being represented--and giving more perspective to her own, by surrounding it. The paper then points out that the background of race and post-colonial features strongly in these insights about difference, but the impact of these two novels is even further-reaching -- it is an impact which has everything to do with what it means to be human.

From the Paper:

"Both Hortense and Lucy are highly unpleasant people. Spoiled, selfish, self-absorbed, with a sense of entitlement that confounds belief, they are supremely uninterested in anyone other than themselves, and unable to see the suffering of others with any empathy. Hortense is convinced that she is special because of her golden skin and her well-known father. She has completely absorbed the colonial indoctrination of her education and believes herself to be truly English, and therefore above her home country and its people. In fact, upon arriving in England it becomes clear that she considers herself more English than the English."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2004
• Levy, Andrea. Small Island London: Review, 2004

More papers on Young Women Coming of Age in Jamaica:

• Analytical Essay # 134113 : "Journeying Back from the Colonies"
• Analytical Essay # 50956 : "Coming of Age Literature"
• Book Review # 125039 : "Coming of Age in Mississippi"

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