Autobiography of My Mother the

¶ … Autobiography of My Mother The book the Autobiography of my Mother, by Jamaica Kincaid, is full of many themes of subjugation. The narrator's color and ethnicity, two concepts that are linked but also separate in this book, as well as her economic and geographic circumstances, are all looked down on in the society in which she grows up and lives. Because of the way she is treated about these things, they are very important characteristics. But even more important for the character and for the book is her gender.

Being a woman affects her even more than being part Carib, part African, and part Scottish, and more than being black. It affects her not only in the way society looks at her and treats her, but also biologically in the way her body allows and doesn't allow her certain choices. Kincaid's narrator is robbed of power from many angles, and her womanhood is one way in this book. Kincaid does not mean to show that women are powerless in general, but that they are largely powerless in Xuela's world.

Xuela is always resisting authority figures, especially her step-mother, but she ends up having to obey them. This is a very literal way of showing how the fact that Xuela is a woman keeps her under other people's power. There are also more symbolic ways of showing how women and feminine qualities are looked down on and even gotten rid of in this novel. At the very outset, Xuela's mother dies in childbirth.

Giving birth is often seen as a symbol of femininity; it is, after all, the one thing women can do that men absolutely cannot. In the opening scene of this novel, it kills the narrator's mother, symbolizing the destruction of the feminine at the moment when she is, in some views, the most feminine. This event is more than just symbolic, of course. It also has very literal and very real effects on Xuela. It destroys the connection Xuela has with feminine leadership and the basic maternal bond.

She is left with her step-mother, who is jealous of Xuela because of what she represents, her husband's first wife. The example Xuela sees of womanhood, and the one she later repeats, is one of jealousy and spite. At one point, this step-mother even tries to kill Xuela with a necklace, piece of jewelry. This is another example of femininity -- this time in the form of a feminine object, the necklace -- being used in a destructive way.

Xuela so identifies with this picture of women that she repeats the behavior without even understanding why, such as when she seduces her step-sister's lover or sleeps with other women's husbands. Eventually, Xuela marries a rich white man who loves her, and she uses this love to make fun of him and control her world. This is the only way she has been taught to be a woman. She has almost all of the traditional negative "feminine" traits, such as jealousy, manipulation, and selfishness, but none of the good qualities.

She has no empathy with other people and no compassion. She is also not over-emotional, another negative quality often stereotypically associated with women. Instead, she often seems to lack emotion, acting coolly and bitterly from motives that even she doesn't understand. Since the entire book is told from her perspective, the reader can easily see why her view of women and femininity becomes.