The Cultivation of Cultivated Women

Our social environment is like a river that flows both ways: our culture affects the way we perceive the events that occur in our lives the same way the events in our lives affect the way we react to our culture. Literature is a reflection of both these flows. According to Bennett and Royle, "if literature can be described as the kind of writing in which the nature of personal identity is most fully explored, it is also a space of exhilarating, even anarchic openness and imaginative or transformational possibility." In other words, though literature allows intimacy and introspection, it can also be used for much wider scopes. Literature doesn't only examine who we are but also who we want to be, exploring complex elements regarding the nature of identity and its construction.

Linked to identity construction are interpellation and resistance. Interpellation is, according to Louis Althusser, the process through which "the dominant hegemony, or prevailing ideology, forms the attitudes of people in society." He also calls it "hailing the subject". With the aid of cultural references and innuendoes, interpellation constructs a way of living that will later become or remain standard in real life. Resistance is the opposite phenomenon. By writing with a different point of view, often criticizing the current prevailing ideology, the author creates and promotes a new ideology.

Girl by Jamaica Kincaid and An Introduction by Kamala Das are two works that use elements of both interpellation and resistance in their construction of identity. This essay examines these elements, first discussing the notion of interpellation in Jamaica Kincaid's Girl and then the concept of resistance. Finally, it will briefly apply the same view on Kamala Das' An Introduction. Though the two texts involve many relevant concepts such as ethnicity and class, the essay mainly focuses on the poems' notions of gender.

As its title indicates, Jamaica Kincaid's Girl is about a girl, but it is not as much about the girl herself or what she does as it is about what it is believed the girl should do or should be doing. Antonio Gramski claims that "the dominant class [...] enjoys the prestige of the masses and controls the ideology (a term often used synonymously to hegemony) that shapes individual consciousness." The dominated learn to adopt the values and beliefs of the dominants. At first glance, Girl reads like an easy guide to housekeeping:

"Cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn't have gum on it, because that way it won't hold up well after a wash; soak slat fish overnight before you cook it."

This seemingly endless counsel is given to a young girl by a speaker who the reader can only assume is her mother. Though the poem never openly states that the voice is female, it's insinuated that only a woman would know the things that are being taught. Also, the reader knows the voice doesn't belong to the girl's father because he is mentioned in the third person: "this is how you iron your father's khaki shirt so that it doesn't have a crease."

The titular girl is never truly referred to as a girl or a woman either until the very end of the poem: "you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near her bread?" Three elements let the reader know she's a girl before the end of the text. The first is the fact that she is not a boy: "you are not a boy." The second is the list of tasks she is given: "this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man." The third is her mother calling her a slut, something only a woman can be called: "on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not the slut you are so bent on becoming." It should also be noted that there is no male equivalent to the word "slut", thus giving weight to Monique Wittig's argument in Les Guérillères that the language women "speak is made up of words that are killing" them.

In the hegemony the poem depicts, women are defined by what they are not, by their obligations toward men, and by the unique ways they will be degraded. That latter fate is hinted to be inevitable as the poem slowly moves from "the slut you are so bent on becoming" to "the slut I have warned you against becoming". As Louis Althusser points out, "the dominant class's hegemony is however never complete."

Kincaid creates her own literature, "thereby establishing an alternative hegemony to challenge the hegemony." The depersonalization of the girl is not complete. Firstly, the main voice refers to her as "you", the second person, meaning that the girl still has an identity, a self: "Is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?" According to Benveniste, "person is inherent only in the positions ‘I' and ‘you'." If the girl's identity had been completely destroyed, "you" would have been replaced by "a girl" or "a woman": "This is how a woman..."

Secondly, the girl has a voice of her own. It is presented in italics: "but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school"; "but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?" Each of the girl's interventions begins with the word "but." It is a protest, a thought that resists the dominant ideology. The shapeless structure of the poem is intimidating and confusing, emphasizing the ridiculous aspect of what society is asking of her.

In An Introduction, Kamala Das explores similar themes: "Be wife, they said. Be embroiderer, be cook, / Be a quarreller with servants. Fit in." In here as well, a woman is feeling the pressures of a dominant hegemony. However, while the resistance in Girl is discrete and subtle, it's much bolder and stronger in An Introduction.

The dominant hegemony is defeated at the end of Das' poem: the woman rids herself of her guilt. The second person is assigned to the dominants, giving them shape and palpability and thus making them vulnerable: "I have no joys which are not yours, no/ Aches which are not yours." To the woman was assigned the pronoun "I," which is the most prevalent in the poem. In fact, it appears fourteen times in the final stanza. The speaker considers herself equal to the dominants: "I too call myself I."

Jamaica Kincaid's Girl and Kamala Das' An Introduction both protest against their dominant hegemony, but they do so in very different manners: Jamaica Kincaid uses irony, while Kamala Das' speaker proudly claims her identity. Regardless, the prejudice they face as women is undeniable. Whether a subtle whisper or a loud cry, their complaint must be heard.

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