Jamaica Kincaid and Female Sexuality in The Autobiography of My Mother

A controversial topic of discussion, the role of female sexuality has been dissected countless times in subjects related to humanities. Most often times, one would be complacent with the idea of a woman's sexuality as either a weapon of seduction used to gain favor/power or as a conquest for men to enhance their sense of masculine superiority. Both situations largely fail to address, or at least remark, the importance of sexual pleasure for the woman. Sexual engagement indeed can serve as a source of pleasure and psychological armory for the woman, as lucidly illustrated in Jamaica Kincaid's novel The Autobiography of My Mother, wherein the sexuality of the protagonist, Xuela, functions both as a psychological defense mechanism against her traumatic childhood and a subconscious desire for autonomy, manifest through her borderline promiscuity and her exceptional exhibition of self-love.

The female protagonist's sexual awakening initiates with the seduction of Monsieur LaBatte, a married man in whose house she lodges under the permission of his barren wife, who hopes that Xuela's relations with her husband would produce a child which she desperately yearns for. Despite her losing virginity at the young age of fifteen, Xuela clearly acknowledges the pleasure of her first sexual intercourse, "through all parts of my body that ached I relived the deep pleasure I had just experienced" and furthermore exhibits a remarkable equanimity when the rather violent ordeal concludes, "I had only lost consciousness and I picked up where I had left off in my ache of pleasure" (Kincaid 72). Xuela's subsequent remorseless act of abortion is likely to be no less startling to the conservative readership than her deriving pleasure from sex because these actions stem from her own free will. To clarify any doubt on the matter, Kincaid explicitly highlights the importance of the freedom to choose in the last sentence of the episode when Xuela has aborted her baby, "I had carried my own life in my own hands" (83). Xuela's refusal of motherhood-an evident result of her motherless, ill-treated childhood-signifies the crux of Kincaid's feministic argument: women can, and should, have exclusive right over their own body, whether it is deriving pleasure from sex or refusing the biological faculty of womanhood. After having made the conscious decision to maintain control over her body, Xuela hones her sexuality into a tool from which she herself derives pleasure by engaging in physical relationships with two other men-a stevedore named Roland and a widowed English doctor named Philip-which amount to neither happiness nor contentment for her. Xuela's borderline promiscuity belies her desire to assume control and her refusal to play the subservient role-both as a woman and as a colonized individual. Her consistently jaded tone in retelling her carnal affairs with men, and ultimately her acknowledgment that she "married [Philip], a man [she] did not love", shows how Xuela emotionally dissociates herself from any interpersonal attachment with her partners (205). As an effect of this emotional detachment, Xuela recounts her affairs in notably crisp and analytical details, signifying the perspective of one in control. Her dissociative behavior is likely attributed to her loveless and abusive childhood, which is dominated by a father who cared for her about as much as he does his bundle of dirty clothes, a stepmother who tried to poison her, siblings and schoolmates who alienated her. In dissociating herself from the emotionally evocative aspect of the situations, Xuela subconsciously uses isolation, a Freudian defense mechanism against trauma in which the individual severs the emotional and interpersonal attachment to lessen the painful feelings should conflicts arise.

Through her blunt descriptions of "the sharp, pungent smell of [her] underarms and between [her] legs...as if fermenting", it becomes clear that Xuela's obsession with her body's smells reflects an unusual form of self-love (58). This egocentric attachment evidently compensates for the love that her family withholds from her. At the first sign of puberty, she "was not surprised and not afraid" but instead displays exceptional composure and control in her act of fashioning napkins out of flour bags by herself to stop the blood flow. This incident underscores Xuela's early disposition for assuming control over her own sexuality. To Xuela, her habitual masturbation serves as a source of pleasure and pride even-"in private, [her] hands never left those places; in public, those hands were not far from [her] nose" (58-59). Xuela's constant exploration of her body and the admiring attitude she holds toward that act reveal the desire to love every aspect of her physical body-even body odors, which most people seek to eliminate-and the spiritual self-awareness in terms of what happens to her body and how she should effectively treat it. In a modern day liberal mindset, it is tempting to ask why Kincaid had bother to write a feministic story about a woman so preoccupied with her sexuality rather than one who is engaged in some extraordinary feats, such as one who works her way through poverty and sexism to become a scholar or a revolutionary activist, et cetera. However, such story only serves best as a Hollywood fantasy, having no truth to the reality of the destitute, obscure, colonized women who are denied the ownership of their bodies, much less of their intellect and life. It would be remiss to simply dismiss Xuela as a hyper-sexual woman keen on obtaining control without looking more in- depth into the psychological makeup of her character. Xuela's notable source of strength primarily consists of an acute sense of self-awareness and a solid internal locus of control-sense of control from within-both of which are deeply intertwined. This understanding provides a feasible explanation as to why Xuela pours in great effort in maintaining control and in looking inwardly to gain knowledge from herself. In the case of accumulating knowledge, it is worth noting that Xuela has been her own educator from a young age and that most of her knowledge stems from within, either from sagacious instinct or analytical introspection. One memorable instance from the novel that illustrates internal wisdom is when she asks "where is my father? " in English, a language that has never been spoken to her (7). Though Xuela attends school, she credits most of her accomplishments to herself while simultaneously portrays her experience at school as antagonistic and full of malice-"my memory, ability to retain the tiniest detail...regarded as unusual that my teacher said I was evil...pointing to the fact that my mother was of the Carib people" (16). By portraying herself in a sympathetic light as the enlightened yet powerless lone individual pitted against the ignorant yet powerful authority figure, Xuela's projection of self doubtlessly contains significant bias and plenty of arrogance-the latter a subconscious compensation for her loveless, traumatic childhood, and ultimately a resultant sense of inferiority. To answer the previously posed question: Kincaid chooses to develop Xuela's character as she does because her story resounds with the collective female experience and the human experience at large. Xuela stands out not by committing herself to any idealistic political movement or by bringing about any extraordinary breakthrough for mankind but because she desires what women-as well as men-innately want: the freedom to own her body, to feel pleasure, to control her life, and to educate herself. Though Xuela possesses positive attributes such as control and self-reliance, she is not without imperfection: her arrogance, sense of inferiority, and detachment ultimately result in her failure to find enduring happiness in life. Like many women-colonized and uncolonized-Xuela is bound by the sexual standard of society and culture. What makes her narrative outstanding is how she makes the most out of her situation, by assuming control over her body, loving it and brandishing it, realizing that her body is one entity a woman must have autonomy over before she wishes for autonomy in anything else.

Through the egocentric approach in the protagonist's sexuality, Kincaid's underlying theme resonates universally with the collective human experience. No matter what one's gender, race, national identity, social status, and psychological development are, all humans seek out autonomy- whether in their more abstract pursuit of free will or in their basic biological desire for sex. Furthermore, Kincaid wishes to relay the message: before attempting any grandiose feat, one must begin with sufficient control and knowledge of one's self.

Work Cited

Kincaid, Jamaica. The Autobiography of My Mother. 1st. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996.