“How Do You Get to Be That Way?”: Pursuit of Love, Observation of Marriage, and Self-Expression in Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy

• Main Authors: Tzu-ChenTsai, 蔡子晨
• Other Authors: Shu-li Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/2ya2fs

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系 === 107 === In Lucy, Lucy suffers from the childhood trauma caused by the frequent absence of her father and the eventual betrayal of her mother, both of which shape Lucy into a person who cannot seem to understand what the commitment of love entails and thus resort to indulge in sex as a means of rebelling against her Caribbean past and her mother’s expectations. The thesis aims to examine how Lucy’s past in her motherland, intertwined with her experiences in the present, hinders her from understanding the meaning of love, and how she tries to seek out a way of self-expression, first through sex and then through art, in order to free herself from such a predicament. In the first chapter, I will analyze how both Lucy’s childhood experiences and her forced exile to the United States shape her into a person who finds it difficult to truly love anyone. I argue that, in her reminiscence, she sees herself as a postcolonial refugee, unloved by her parents at home and then unwilling to love anyone other than herself while abroad. In the second chapter, I will discuss how Lucy’s estrangement from the customs of the host land and how her reluctance to be assimilated into the American family she works for makes her an objective observer of the family tragedy unfolding before her eyes. I want to examine how Lucy the observer, upon witnessing two failed marriages—the one between her parents and the one between her employers—begins to harbor distrust not only in marriage as a social institution but also in love as the cause not of happiness, but of trauma and betrayal. In the last chapter, I argue that, despite her many predicaments, Lucy still tries to find her own way of self-expression in photography and writing, which may open up new possibilities in her pursuit of love.