Cover - Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid.
The first person narrative novel, Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid, recounts coming of age stories of Annie John. In this novel, Kincaid demonstrates the themes of mother-and-daughter relationship and self-identity. Throughout Kincaid’s narration, it is a remarkable fact that Annie and her mother, whose influence comes from years of proximity, are so much alike: Apart from her physical traits—such as her intelligence and appearance—inherited from her mother, she also picks upon her mother’s mannerisms. Moreover, her identity is wrapped up with how she spends her childhood and adolescence with her mother. Once when Annie quarrels with her mother, she says to her mother, “Well, like father like son, like mother like daughter” (102). This notion suggests a mirroring relationship between daughter and mother that is, at one point, adorable intimacy, while later in her life becomes a burden in defining herself. Realizing the lack of originality in her identity because of copying her mother, she finally makes the decision to leave her family and homeland where she was born and raised up for England to seek a new life. While inevitably mirroring her mother, Annie realizes her selfhood and grows from a lamb tied to her mother’s apron strings to an independent female rebelliously striving to find her own identity.
Annie’s imitation of her mother reflects that her perception of herself is influenced by her mother. For example, before twelve, Annie enjoys being a mini version of her mother by matching her mother’s dressing:
Up to then, my mother and I had many dresses made out of the same cloth, though hers had a different, more grownup style, a boat neck or a sweetheart neckline, and a pleated or gored skirt, while my dresses had high necks with collars, a deep hemline, and, of course, a sash that tied in the back. One day, my mother and I had gone to get some material for new dresses to celebrate her birthday (the usual gift from my father), when I came upon a piece of cloth—a yellow background, with figures of men, dressed in a long-ago fashion, seated at pianos that they were playing, and all around them musical notes flying off into the air. I immediately said how much I loved this piece of cloth, but my mother replied, “Oh, no. You are getting too old for that. It’s time you had your own clothes. You just cannot go around the rest of your life looking like a little me.”…In the end, I got my dress with the men playing their pianos, and my mother got a dress with red and yellow overgrown hibiscus. (25-26)
When she was young and naïve, Annie and her mother used to wear clothes “cut from the same cloth”—a phrase is not only referring to the material of their clothes, but implying that Annie shares a lot of similarities with her mother. Furthermore, their similarity is from the connection between the two who were once a unity: Like a small piece of cloth cut from a large one, so was Annie, an infant, cut from her mother’s body after delivery. Annie cognize herself as not her own being, but part of her mother, whom she can relies on and who gives her personality and sense of security while she doesn’t have her individual personality and security from being herself. Through idiom and symbolism, Kincaid suggests the motive of Annie’s imitation that makes her and her mother similar is Annie’s rooted misconception about self-identity that she is affiliated with her mother rather than as a separate individual. This misconception attributed to her dependent personality impedes the development of her own identity.
However, this union of mother and daughter is negated when Annie’s mother suddenly refuses to have Annie wear like herself. Therefore Annie shows nostalgia in demand of the affinity and union that she has been used to. Her fondness for element of “long-ago fashion” in the pattern she chooses shows her nostalgia for her childhood. This sentiment is confirmed when she continues to recount, “a few days earlier I had asked in my most pleasing, winning way for a look through the trunk” (27) which stores memorials from her childhood; she misses the past time when she used to look through the trunk with her mother and watch her mother as being told a story that happened long ago about one of the collections. Feeling the bitterness for the refusal and alienation from her mother because of the changes taking place in her body during adolescence, Annie wishes she “could screw [her]self at night before [she] went to sleep and which would surely cut back on [her] growing” (27). She is fixated in the past. She longs to be the little child again—even if this means torturing herself—to retrieve her mother’s support and cares. Nonetheless she doesn’t want to conform the young-lady business as her mother wished.
The patterns that mother and daughter choose also reflect their characters respectively, the contradiction of which explains the reason for their conflicts: Annie appreciates the pattern of “notes flying off into the air”—an imagery of freedom. Interestingly, the mother takes “a dress with red and yellow overgrown hibiscus” which is considered a symbol of delicate beauty. Similarly, her taste for the style of her dresses—“a boat neck or a sweetheart neckline, and a pleated or gored skirt”—highlights very female, elegant and captivating features. Annie’s mother celebrates feminine charms, decency and elegant manners and instill her sense of value to Annie as well, which explains why she fixates on making sure Annie behaves like a proper young lady. However, to Annie, practicing young-lady business is restricting her freedom. When she is sent for piano lessons, Annie is asked “not to come back” by her piano teacher for she is “unable to resist eating from the bowl of plums she had placed on the piano purely for decoration” (28). Her unruly behavior shows her antipathy against following rules. Even though she enjoys being a mini version of her mother, she resists her mother’s restraint. This unruliness becomes the embryo of her later rebelliousness and ego.
Unable to count on her mother anymore, Annie also loses the sense of security and suddenly she is exposed to the inverse of it—crisis. In response to the change of her mother’s attitude, Annie attempts to protect herself in a way that she intentionally imitates her mother’s tone to reciprocate the abominable tone her mother uses. One time she doesn’t go back home right after school and her mother comes to her for the reason of being late:
To me she said, “You are late. It would please me to hear an excuse from you.” She was using that tone of voice: it was as if I were not only a stranger but a stranger that she did not wish to know.
Trying to match her tone of voice but coming nowhere near success, I said something about being kept late for extra studies. (101)
She doesn’t want to tell the truth for she knows that her mother will scold her for that. To defend herself, she matches her mother’s tone and tells a lie. Another time when her mother asks in a way that Annie finds hypocritical for the marbles that Annie hides, she echoes her mother’s hypocrisy:
“Well, Little Miss, where are your marbles?” Summoning my own warm, soft and newly acquired treacherous voice, I said, “I don’t have any marbles. I have never played marbles, you know.” (70)
In imitating the voice of her mother, Annie also shows her strong sense of defending herself. Without the person she can depend upon, Annie sinks in the feeling that she is abandoned in a cold and dangerous world, and her mother, in turn, plays a hypocritical role in front of her. This grieves Annie. In demand of self-assurance and protection from her mother’s stinging attitude, she immediately reciprocates her mother the same hypocrisy. She forms an unyielding personality and develops a pattern of rebellion that she will throw back whatever she thinks hurt her.
Nonetheless, it is ironic that as Annie rebels her mother, she is also influenced by her mother. Influenced her mother’s aesthetic, her appearance reminds readers of her mother at youth. They are both thin and inclined to hide their faces. Annie so described her mother:
He back was already curved from not ever stand up straight, even though she got repeated warnings. She was so shy that she never smiled enough for you to see her teeth, and if she ever burst out laughing she would instantly cover her mouth with her hands. (69)
There is a description of Annie herself:
Walking to and from school, my long-skirt uniform hanging on my thin form, my head held down, my back curved in an exaggerated stoop, one arm held behind me and resting on my lower back, the other anchoring the bag that held my books, each step I took purposely timid, I created such a picture that apparently everyone talked about me. (128)
Here, mother and daughter give people the same impression of introversion—they look shy and timid. Because of her new height, Annie has to stoop, which also resembles her mother. She wears shorter skirt and acts timidly and modestly. These feminine characteristics mirror her mother’s aesthetic conception as a result of instillation of her mother’s values as a woman to Annie. Notwithstanding, Annie does these intentionally and she is totally different from her look. She is not modest but achieving a figure that seems modest in order to impress others. Her pursuit for others’ attention shows her gradually formation of self-consciousness, which is significant for Annie to get rid of her dependent personality and to identify herself as her own being. Though she tries to be distinct from her mother, ironically, Annie develop her own personality through doing things that her mother did.
Moreover, the figurative characterization of mother and daughter hints the mirroring of the two. For example, black things that hail from their insides is a motif, “My mother turned to face me. We looked at each other, and I could see the frightening black thing leave her to meet the frightening black thing that had left me. They met in the middle and embraced…At that, everything stopped. The whole earth fell silent. The two black things joined together in the middle of the room separated, hers going to her, mine coming back to me…” (101,102). The phrases “in the middle”, “in the middle of the room”, the characterization of black things assumes symmetry in the scenes as if there is a mirror placed between them. The black substance exclusively observed by mother and daughter is a paradoxical trope for it symbolizes two extremes in their relationship: “Embrace” suggests accepting each other willingly. Though the mother and the daughter might have not noticed, they are attracting each other because they are so much alike. However contradictorily, what embraces seems not so nice. The black thing also indicates the secret antagonism of the two, which is what their relationship seems like.
Another suggestive instance of their mirroring relationship is their name. The name of Annie’s mother is not disclosed until the last few chapters. “She was my mother, Annie; I was her daughter, Annie” (105)—the same name. Why do Annie’s parents give her the name of her mother? Usually giving one a name after another means a memorial of the latter or an expectation that the former will become a person like the latter. The name qualifies the person. “[T]he person who receives a name thereby receives an identity and a place within the society”, as H. Edward Deluzain asserts in Names and Personal Identity. “The name differentiates the child from others; thus, the society will be able to treat and deal with the child as someone with needs and feelings different from those of other people.” Annie grows up with a name bestowing the identity of her mother, while her own needs and feelings are overlooked by her parents and society. Yet Annie realizes that she is different and seeks her own identity, transcending her mother’s influence.
The ending of the novel is ironic; Annie leaves her mother and seems to have found a brand new life—in a strange place with no one knows her, yet that was also what her mother did. In some ways, Annie doesn’t get away from the cycle of fate—these two generations ultimately go on the same route. Her mother’s experience repeats in the daughter’s coming-of-age. However, Annie does acquire her own perceptions and personalities: Her own rebellion against marriage and unyielding character are especially prodigious in this social background.
From Annie, we find an image of a youngster that may relate to ourselves, an image that misgives, loves, grieves and grows. We frequently ask who we are and what kind of people we will be. Like Annie, most of the time we do something because we feel that we have to do and we have to change. In exploring her own identity, Annie, beginning with a dependent personality, achieves independence of character. Though through one time or two of efforts we might not be able to convert us into our ideal selves, we are always getting closer and closer in continuous pursuing.
Works Cited
Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John. New York: Penguin, 1986. Print.
Deluzain, H. Edward. “Names and Personal Identity.” Behind the Name. 1996. Web. 20 Apr. 2014.