Bildungsroman In The Caribbean

4. Conclusion – Learning is never ending process

Every culture has its characters that distinct them from others. It is fascinating and exciting to find, meet, learn, and examine them, especially, when they come from an exotic island – the Caribbean. The aim of this work was to analyse the Caribbean Female Bildungsroman, which shows the young female protagonist’s experiences and growing up processes in the Caribbean, during the colonial and post-colonial time. The genre Bildungsroman has always been popular among the Caribbean authors. Due to rightly express the growing up experiences in the Caribbean context, the writers of the island have been adapting the traditional form not only as defined by German and British scholars, but reworking

She portrays, in these two novels, young black female protagonists, who struggle with their identity, during their growing up time on the island, which was under Britain colonialism until the 1980s. Both protagonists have complicated mother-daughter relationships that metaphorically corresponds the relationship between “powerful” Britain and “powerless” Antigua. They condemn and rebel directly and indirectly, against post-colonial education, criticising it through their deeds. For example, their refusal to sing the “Rule Britannia!” or attempt to forget the poem about “Daffodils.” It seems that showing the traumas of a colonial education Kincaid tries to decolonize her protagonists, as well as herself. The question of identity appears to be a significant theme of West Indian novels, in general. The family ties appear to be very strong in the Caribbean; however, a mother-child relationship is stronger than a father-child relationship. The mothers have more responsibility than the fathers on the discipline of her children, especially, her daughters. The fathers in the two novels are not absent; however, they are always in the background. LeSeur calls it “a pervasive and literal absence of fathers” (5). In general, the woman-to-woman relationships are most significant in the development of the two protagonists. However,

She follows some elements of traditional Bildungsroman as a narration of childhood time, children’s development and growth, conflicts with parents. Further, their movement – big city instead provincial village; in the Caribbean context, it would be the leaving island for Britain or the United States. Another move is a journey from “childhood” to “adulthood,” which is protagonist’s new phase, “the so-called second phase of development” (LeSeur 19). However, their incidents and subsequent responses would be certainly different from their counterparts from the traditional Bildungsroman. Additionally, Kincaid attaches the themes as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, as well as the Caribbean culture, religion, tradition and history that give her novels more color. Analysing the two novels Lucy and Annie John closely, this study observes that the Caribbean Bildungsroman differs from the traditional one by the following elements:

1. Gender roles: In the traditional Bildungsroman, most central characters are male, as Buckley defined in his work Season of Youth. In contrast, the Caribbean Bildungsroman deals mostly with a complicated young female’s development. In general, the female characters are more active than males. The males are almost in the background, especially, in the novels of Jamaica