CULTURAL IDEOLOGY AND DEFENSE IN KINCAID

CULTURAL IDEOLOGY AND DEFENSE IN KINCAID’S ANNIE JOHN
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS: culture - ideology – subjugation – defense – survival
INTRODUCTION
1- IDEOLOGY OF SUBJUGATION
2- ALL OUT DEFENSE
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abstract
This article seeks to make the argument that Jamaica Kincaid through her post-
colonial novel Annie John (1985) is delineating the ideological subjugation of the Antiguan
people and the Caribbean at large. While culture is supposed to unite different traditions into a
sort of melting pot, it is selfishly used by the British colonizers as a means of discrimination.
The Antiguan American author subsequently shows her eponymous heroine grappling with
oppressive forces for preservation. This instinct of survival accompanies Annie at home and
beyond as she boards a steamer sailing to England.
INTRODUCTION
Tackling this culture-oriented
1
article, I make the argument that culture while it is
believed to unite people and nations, can bring about a big relational chasm. A theoretical
framework can help the reader better analyze the interplays between cultural undertones in the
life of Annie. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o in his collections of essays “Moving the Centre: The
Struggle for cultural Freedoms” warns the colonized and post-colonial subjects that the
imperialist cultural tradition in its colonial form was meant to demoralize ancient colonial
people and make them admire the European cultures, their way of life and arts. Its main goal
was to make the defeated believe that they could never achieve any control of their social and
natural environment. Euro-centrism is a mechanism that induces Europeans and white men to
regard themselves as culturally speaking, the centre of the universe. By so doing, they push
1
The customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular country or group.

the black race off the margins as they occupy the centre. This article will dig out the
subjugating ideology of the white man; then it is going to dwell on the subtle defense for
preservation of Annie, the epitome of Caribbean folks.
1- IDEOLOGY OF SUBJUGATION
Annie John the eponymous heroine of Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John (1985) realizes
that she is in full contact with the harsh reality of her imagination and thoughts. British
patriarchal rule during colonial time is in her way of life in Antigua. African Caribbean
people are dehumanized like all people with the black skin as Fanon said in his philosophy of
the white oppressors who considered black people outside any humanity. The black race was
regarded as underdogs. Maria Mies notes that in order to be able to freely exploit the slaves,
they had for centuries defined them outside humanity and Christianity. Western theorists
coined a dark image of the black race, which made it possible to discard any attempt of the
blacks to westernize in all respects.
Denied their humanity after they had been enslaved and colonized for more than four
centuries, the Black race in general, and Caribbean folks specifically were bogged down in all
out sufferings. Annie’s mother makes the reader see bluntly their double-facedness. Even
though the protagonist was to some extent mothered by Annie Drew, the latter would rather
please the white man’s ideological culture than hand down her own Caribbean traditional
values. The mother’s insistence in teaching some mannerisms
2
needs a closer examination.
Several instances in the narrations depict Annie as victimized. The reason is that she resents
bowing to Columbus’s story or having to pay tribute to others’ aping of British culture and
values.
Eagleton’s theory on ideology
3
turns out true here. Because Antiguans are a different
race and speak a different language, white people exert dominion over them. The latter are
bogged down in a theory that seeks to regard them as inferior beings due to their
morphological differences. Obviously, after having been forced to cohabit with the colonizers
in the West Indies, aboriginal people in the Caribbean archipelagos are considered as beasts.
These poor colonized folks are discriminated against so much so that they may fall prey to
self-loathing.
2
Here Annie’s mother apes the white man’s beliefs in Victorian ladies indolence and sense of womanhood.
3
For Eagleton, then, ideology as the legitimation of a dominant group or class is but one of six ways one might preliminarily
define the term. 'We can mean by it, first,' he writes, 'the general material process of production. of ideas, beliefs, and
values in social life.

Annie also finds disturbing a similar kind of situation when she encounters four boys
across the street from her. She has been warned to avoid being the slut the baker would not let
touch his bread. She is supposed to leave marginal boys alone and walk her way in lady-like
gait. Even so, the situation is an uphill task for her as she narrates:
I was about to do this (sit on the sidewalk and cry) when I noticed four boys
standing across the street from me; they were looking at me and bowing as they said,
in an exaggerated tone of voice, pretending to be grownup gentlemen living in
Victorian times, ‘Hallo, Madame. How are you this afternoon?’ and ‘What a
pleasant thing, our running into each other like this,’ and ‘we meet again after all
this time,’ and ‘Ah, the sun, it shines and shines only on you” (Kincaid 1985:
95).
Annie seems particularly disturbed by the incident of harassment and mockery, which
she viewed as mimicry of British men’s often-insincere approach to British women during the
Victorian Era of the nineteenth century. This hypocritical attitude may make sense if
something she said earlier in the eponymous novel is analyzed.
Annie has been taught to pretend what she does not believe in as she argues “of
course, sometimes, what with our teachers and our books, it was hard for us to tell on which
side we really now belonged -with the masters or with the slaves” (Kincaid 1985: 76). Unable
to side with truth, Annie and other black Antiguans support the white man in his domineering
power over the Caribbean folks. She is supposed to walk on the footsteps of Victorian
citizens, lady-like to hear the flattery of bystanders. Annie’s account is an evidence of the
British people’s relentless endeavor to appropriate and possess the Caribbean students as she
elucidates:
All of us celebrated Queen Victoria’s birthday, even though she had been dead a
long time. But we, the descendants of the slaves, knew quite well what had really
happened, and I was sure that if the tables had been turned we would have acted
differently; I was sure that if our ancestors had gone from Africa to Europe and
come upon the people living there, they would have taken a proper interest in the
Europeans on first seeing them, and said, “how nice,” and then gone home to tell
their friends about it (Kincaid 1985: 76).
While Queen Victoria’s brainwashed contemporary citizens and educational masters
are supposed to set an example of internal goodness to the subaltern; they doggedly try hard
to acculturate their subjugation. Victorian mannerism makes Annie despondent as she broods

over her gnawing thoughts. She testifies in these words “I was sitting at my desk, having these
thoughts to myself. I don’t know how long it had been since I lost track of what was going on
around me” (Kincaid 1985: 76-7). How can Annie concentrate in class to replace and take
over Miss Nelson and Miss Moore?
Annie’s reference to Queen Victoria seems to be a reference to her long reign, the
longest of any British monarch at the time. The era is known as a period in which women
endured severe restrictions of their gender and sexuality roles, while men’s freedoms received
few restrictions. It seems that for Annie, understanding the complexities of British
colonization and why it lasted so long is oppressive enough, but her male peers’ practice of
mimicry about the era adds yet another layer of oppression and frustration. The saluting
young men above mentioned had, no doubt, been brainwashed into mimicking or trying to
perpetuate the patriarchal traditions, culture, and values handed down by their former masters
and subsequent colonizers. All the same, this revival of the old Victorian historical relics
worsen Annie John’s coming of age bitterness and oppression.
Cultural biasness
4
centers everything on European civilization as theorized by Ngugi
Wa Thiong’o. As a result, the so called superior culture looks down upon any tradition that
does not resemble western values or clichés. Hegemonic
5
civilizations are more often than not
embroidered to people’s imagination, as universal. Worse, the aforementioned cultural mores
are validated or imposed to characterize the mainstream cultural principles to follow.
Furthermore, marginalizing peripheral cultures, considered as alien or unworthy to conduce to
universality. The cultural gap shows the existence of different ways and manners in society;
moreover, this chasm should be experienced as a sort of “Pluribus Unum” for variety to be
regarded as a wealth, but not as a source of hate.
Coming back to Annie’s headmistress, this argument seeks to emphasize her culture-
oriented stereotypes; when she welcomes new students she cannot wait to warn them that
“she hoped we had all left our bad ways behind us” (Kincaid 1985: 36). Traditional
upbringing is considered as bad education by Annie’s English mistress, Miss Moore. Annie’s
mother is both a victim of stereotypes and a victimizer through her clichés about the English.
4
This can be understood through the daffodils Lucy rejects while Mariah insists that they are beautiful. The Europeans regard
their culture as universal and infuriates Lucy who does not like them as an Antiguan.
5
The white race has always exerted political control over the other races, especially the black.

Annie confesses “once when I didn’t wash, my mother had given me a long scolding
about it, and she ended by saying that it was the only thing she did not like about English
people: they didn’t wash often enough, or wash properly when they finally did” (Kincaid
1985: 36). The white man’s civilization crumbles down in view of the rumors as reported by
Annie Drew. So, very often the judge can be in judgment as nobody or no culture is beyond
fallibility. Culture was the obsession of the child books written by the colonialist writer, Enid
Blyton
6
who accompanied lots of Caribbean children’s scholarly life. Annie, as a school girl
was trained in the philosophy of that racist authoress. This female character is sorry she was
not named after Enid, the racist white authoress who depicts black characters in a biased
cultural ideology.
The protagonist’s protean nature is forgivable as the victor’s culture is magnified as
the model to abide by. Annie was young when she was exposed to the influencing culture.
She may appear as a whimsical girl, but her Caribbean rearing shows her grappling both with
an overpowering British colonial system and with authoritarian biological mother who sets
and privileges the colonial system as an example of rules to follow blindly. Interpretatively,
one may strongly believe that Annie’s voluntary desire to change her name is dictated by the
cultural brainwash black children experienced in their westernized education.
No wonder therefore, why, instead of being critical of their common foe, the
eponymous heroine shows admiration for Enid Blyton. Annie’s subjugation to the pro-
colonialist, Blyton is legendary of Caribbean people’s heritage. According to Annie, the poor
reddish girl, Ruth, may not have wanted to come to Antigua. In the name of cultural
supremacy that gives Ngugi Wa Thiong’o right
7
, British teachers impose their culture and
civilization upon their black students, not with a view to promoting universal values, but so as
to erase the local culture from the world memory. The dichotomy between the two cultures is
consolidated by the belief of Annie that the learnt cultural values are the main stream codes of
conduct to interiorize. The ethnocentricity of Enid is not seen as such, because the child
psyche innocently takes for granted any input.
Annie Drew, Annie and Kincaid’s mother as a Dominican Creole is not deep rooted in
her cultural legacy as she is incapable of shaping her life in accordance with the African
Caribbean tradition of female authenticity. Kincaid’s female protagonist is rather exposed to
6
A very successful English writer of child books. She wrote over 700 books including the famous Five, Secret
Sven and Noddy series, which are still very popular with children.
7
In his book “Moving the Centre” Ngugi theorizes the concepts of periphery and centre. The first concept
applies to the marginalized and the second designates the Western world.