Construction and Reconstruction of Women’s Identity in Eat

Pray Love and Annie John

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of the degree
of M.A. in English

By
Shreyasi

Enrolment No.
04421610920

University School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University
Sector-16 C, Dwarka, New Delhi

April 2022
 Undertaking

This is to state that the dissertation titled ‘Construction and Reconstruction of Women’s
Identity in Eat Pray Love and Annie John,’ is an original piece of work and I have duly
acknowledged all resources referred to.

Shreyasi
Enrolment No. 04421610920

Certificate
This is to certify that Shreyasi has worked on the topic, ‘Construction and Reconstruction of
Women’s Identity in Eat Pray Love and Annie John,’ for her M.A. English dissertation under
my supervision.

Shreyasi Dr. Shuchi Sharma

Enrolment No. 04421610920 Associate Professor
Supervisor

Prof. Manpreet Kaur Kang

Dean

2
 Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction 1-5

Chapter 2: Elizabeth’s Reconstruction of her Identity in Eat Pray Love 6-18

Chapter 3: Annie John and the Questions Pertaining to Identity 19-33

Chapter 4: Conclusion 34-36

List of Works Cited and Consulted 37-38

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 Chapter 1

Introduction

Gender is an identity constituted by the stylized repetition of acts.

—Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, Butler

Butler rightly claims that gender is a socially constructed term. Certain sets of qualities

represent the idea of masculinity and femininity. The qualities such as strength, courage, and

assertiveness have been associated with masculinity whereas sensitivity, humanity, and

nurturance are considered essential feminine traits. These are also the predefined attributes

associated with what should differentiate between a female and a male. As the definitions

associated with being a man or a woman have been constructed by society for the benefit of

patriarchy, these definitions can also be changed in time and space. This research is an

inquiry into the hegemonic notions associated with the construction of gender identity. The

research attempts to conduct a comparative analysis of two texts, i.e., Eat Pray Love and

Annie John, that are set in different socio-political and cultural milieus. Though, much

research has already been conducted about the construction of women's identity in academic

essays and fictional novels, the comparative analysis of two culturally and racially different

semi-autobiographical and autobiographical texts is a less explored domain.

Thus, this research is an attempt to explore two different semi-autobiographical and

autobiographical texts in light of third-wave feminism, and the theoretical discourse

associated with Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Judith Butler's essay On Performativity. The

research further tries to question and elaborate on how women's education has led to women's

emancipation and how the system of patriarchy still tries to subvert the fundamental rights of

1
women, irrespective of their position in the society, and why, in spite of belonging to two

different age groups, ethnicities, and cultures, women are forced to fight the same war against

the patriarchy. Even before going through the process of what defines themselves, women

from all spheres of society have to go through the tedious task of justifying themselves to the

patriarchy. This is where woman empowerment through women’s education becomes the

most important component of the entire feminist discourse.

Women empowerment is a topic of contemporary relevance stirring up multiple

debates around its definition. However, it is important to clarify what is intended by the word

‘empowerment.’ Women Empowerment seeks to make an effort of accepting the viewpoints

of a female as well as making an effort to seek them. It is an ongoing process. The meaning

of power can be understood by the ability to make our own choices. Empowerment refers to

the process through which those who have been denied such ability acquire such an ability.

Modern women have become quite capable of sustaining themselves and living life

on their own terms. The empowerment of women enhances the resources for human rights

development. Writers such as Simone de Beauvoir assert that women's emancipation is

through education. She believed that the choice of freedom is a fundamental right that can be

achieved by the use of brainpower and intellect. Empowerment through education is,

therefore, a necessity for the liberation of women. However, there are limitations to education

as a route to empowerment. Society is characterized by various forms of gender inequality.

The effects of education are also limited due to lack of mobility. Research shows that

educated women are less likely to suffer from domestic violence and have better control over

their lives. Apart from these factors, a women's biological predisposition is seen as a

limitation to her empowerment. Simone de Beauvoir asserts this issue in her work The

Second Sex and argues that “a women's attitude towards her body changes over the years, not

because of her body's predisposition but because of society” (23). She says that “the supposed

2
disadvantages of the female body are not actual disadvantages that exist objectively in all

societies but they are merely judged to be disadvantages by our society” (25).

Judith Butler in her essay On Performativity examines the ways through which gender

is constructed. She considers her task here ‘to examine in what ways gender is constructed

through specific corporeal acts, and what possibilities exist for the cultural transformation of

gender through such acts. The acts which she is talking about are “performative tasks within a

theatrical context” (527). She is saying that women are put in a position to act in a specific

way in a specific circumstance and these ways have been unchallenged throughout history.

She further says:

To be female is, according to that distinction, a facticity which has no meaning, but

to be a woman is to have become a woman, to compel the body to conform to a

historical idea of 'woman,' to induce the body to become a cultural sign, to materialize

oneself in obedience to a historically delimited possibility, and to do this as a

sustained and repeated corporeal project (530).

The protagonists of the chosen texts i.e. Annie and Elizabeth are challenging this limited

possibility, though in different ways. These feminist texts challenge gender stereotypes in a

multitude of ways. One wants to find her own self by trying to do what she wants to do with

her life instead of what society expects her to. The other one has to leave her hometown to

create a new self for herself in a foreign land.

Butler states that “gender is an act which has been rehearsed, much as a script

survives the particular actors who make use of it, but which requires individual actors in

order to be actualized and reproduced as reality once again. The complex components that go

into an act must be distinguished in order to understand the kind of acting in concert and

acting in accord which acting in one's gender invariably is” (531). What Butler is trying to

say here is that Gender is established through the repetition of certain acts. These acts are

3
performative as they produce a series of effects. Gender is performative means that there can

be no gender identity before the gendered acts because the acts are continuously constituting

the identity. Butler wrote that nobody can be a gender before doing gendered acts. Butler

asserts that femininity is not a choice but the forcible citation of a norm. The question as to

what constitutes “subversive,” as opposed to ordinary everyday gender parody, is left open in

the conclusion of Gender Trouble, where Butler asserts that it is possible to disrupt what is

taken to be the foundations of gender, anticipating what such parodic repetitions will achieve,

without suggesting exactly how this can take place: In assuming that the meaning of

women's social existence can be derived from some fact of their physiology. In distinguishing

"Feminist theory has often been critical of naturalistic explanations of sex and sexuality that

differentiates sex from gender, feminist theorists have disputed causal explanations that

assume that sex dictates or necessitates certain social meanings for women's experience"

(520). Thus, the definitions of Sex and sexuality are insufficient to differentiate sex from

gender as explained by feminist theorists.

In the following chapters, the research explores and critiques how the protagonists of

the two texts reconstruct themselves. Simone De Beauvoir, a French author and feminist

claims that "woman, and by extension, any gender, is a historical situation rather than a

natural fact” (45). This means that through the centuries, the qualities within the spectrum of

what constitutes feminine have been formed by the repetition of the established attributes, so

much so that it is considered to be a natural fact. The protagonists of the chosen texts i.e.,

Elizabeth and Annie are seen to be debunking this very idea.

Eat Pray Love is a memoir written by an American writer Elizabeth Gilbert whereas

Annie John is written by an Antiguan writer Jamaica Kincaid. The study reveals results that

satiate the expectations of a post-modern feminist in the form of the protagonists i.e., Annie

and Elizabeth. In the next chapters, the research aims to deconstruct the factors which lead an

4
 independent white American woman to step out of her marriage and move halfway across the

world to find her essence on one hand and the factors associated with Annie’s search for self

in a postcolonial setting on the other. Black female protagonists often escape from one set of

circumstances to reinvent themselves somewhere far away, to start fresh and unknown. The

texts have been analysed in the light of theories associated with third-wave feminism. Third-

wave feminism is a complex discourse that has layers that need special understanding. It

seeks to question, reclaim, and redefine the ideas, words, and media that have transmitted

ideas about womanhood, gender, and sexuality.

Moreover, the theory of performativity and references from The Second Sex by Simone

De Beauvoir has been used throughout this study. The data sources are obtained solely from

Books, Journals, and Articles. Eat Pray Love and Annie John both represent female characters

trying to find a meaning to their life by redefining their identities as women. It is important to

note that their education plays the foremost role in their emancipation. The thesis evaluates the

points of similarities and contrasts found during the discourse analysis of the chosen texts with

a focused emphasis on the aspects of ‘Non-Essentialism’ and ‘De/Reconstructing the Female

Self’.

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 Chapter 2

Elizabeth’s Reconstruction of her identity in Eat Pray Love

The research tries to analyse and evaluate Elizabeth’s life changing journeys in three different

cities of the world. The steps involved in this process describe how Gilbert finds herself

through the adventures explored in her travels. Elizabeth is a woman who is trying to deal

with the challenges associated with being an independent woman in a white world economy

as patriarchy inherently continues to dominate and shape her sense of self. In general, in the

novel Eat Pray Love there is a detailed description of a woman whose life teaches the

importance of rebellion in a women’s life. Through this study and the contents given in this

paper, we will further try to critique and analyse the significance of this novel in redefining

the rules which have been pre-established by the patriarchal society for womenfolk. To

establish the notions of postmodern feminism in Eat, Pray Love, a critical analysis of the text

has been conducted. The study also investigates the various aspects of postmodern feminism

and non-essentialism which form the basic standpoint of the theory. Prominent points from

the text have been incorporated into the realm of theory.

To put it broadly, in feminist theory and gender studies, gender essentialism is the

attribution of a fixed essence to women. The essence of women is considered to be universal

and is generally identified with those characteristics are viewed as being specifically

feminine. Essentialism pertains to the view those certain categories that as women, regional

groups, etc have an underlying reality of truth that is not pursued directly. It is a view that

things have a specific trait that defines an object and constitutes its fundamental meaning.

Oftentimes they feel the obligation to perform in a certain way in society. This, specifically,

is already defined many times by society, while other times it is the result of our own

6
continuous patterns over a period. When we act, people expect us to act that way again. There

are also premonitions about how a specific gender must behave and perform.

Feminist theorist Elizabeth Grosz states in her book, Space, Time and Perversion:

Essays on the Politics of Bodies, that Essentialism entails the belief that those characteristics

defined as women’s essence are always shared by all women. It implies a limit of the

variations and possibilities of change- it is not possible for a subject to act in a manner

contrary to her essence. Her essence underlies all the apparent variations differentiating

women from each other. Essentialism thus refers to the existence of fixed characteristics,

given attributes, and historical functions that limit the possibilities of change and thus social

reorganization. The beginning of the novel clearly gives the preliminary reader the hypothesis

that the protagonist is, obviously married and is no longer happy in her marital relationship.

“I don't want to be married anymore” (Gilbert35). It is important to note here that Gilbert is a

woman who married in her early twenties and started having panic attacks when it was

“time” for her to have kids. In the memoir, Gilbert is seen daunting over turning thirty as it

was ostensibly the right time to have kids and settle down. Though Gilbert along with her

husband had anticipated that she would want to “settle down and have children” (13), one of

the major reasons why she thought she would want this life was because she had a sister who

had presented a similar example and Elizabeth, by not following their lifestyle, as she

eventually discovered, was not in unison with her desires.

It is noteworthy how Butler's theory of performativity can be used to understand

Gilbert's behaviour towards understanding her own desires and passions. According to Butler,

there is no easy way to separate the life of gender from a life of desire. Our identity is very

much affected by our passions and desires. Researchers like Merleau Ponty argue that the

body is a historical idea rather than a natural species. By studying and analysing the feminist

revolution since de Beauvoir, the change in the condition of women can be noted, the

7
researchers believe that the process of a woman’s struggle and achieving liberation at the end

is still working out like the same way in the twenty-first century as was at the start of these

revolutions. A woman is still considered as “the Eternal Feminine” who must do all the

feminine chores and seek fulfilment and happiness in the roles assigned to her by society (7).

This claim is further carried forward by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex when she

claims that ' women ' and by extension, any gender is a historical situation rather than a

natural fact (9). When Gilbert chooses to follow her desires she constitutes her gender

differently, thus establishing Butler's view that gender is a sociological construct, and most

importantly if gender can be constructed by society in a natural way it can also be

reconstructed differently.

Elizabeth starts her journey by exploring the city of Rome. She finds a decent place

for her stay in the city. She is happy about spending this time alone for some retrospection

and exploration. She tries to drown her sorrows by immersing herself in the overwhelming

atmosphere and exquisite cuisine of this beautiful city of Rome. She tries to keep herself busy

and do things that give her joy. She gets herself enrolled in language school and tries to learn

Italian as much as possible. She meets many people along the way and lives in the moment,

enjoying this break that she desperately needed. “I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in

Italy, the art of devotion In India, and in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two. A fairly

auspicious sign, it seemed on a voyage of self-discovery” (Gilbert 41). It is quite evident that

Gilbert wanted to try something new. It is the characteristic of Gilbert. She is determined to

learn something new wherever she goes. It is this zest to continue the process of learning that

perhaps takes her to new destinations. This shows that she is an educated woman and being

an educated woman, she is powerful. She is supported by her knowledge, her knowledge

which also leads her to become a good writer and gives her the much cherished and

unforgettable experiences in her life.

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“I am learning about twenty new Italian words a day. I’m always studying, flipping through

my index cards while I walk around the city, dodging local pedestrians. Where am I getting

the brain space to store these words? I’m hoping that maybe my mind has decided to clear out

some old negative thoughts and sad memories and replace them with these shiny new words”

(67). When a person is going through a rough time and trying to heal from within, he/she is

always preoccupied in the bubble of their thoughts. This flight of thoughts is sometimes even

scary. It can make anyone miserable. In such a situation it becomes important to keep

yourself busy. Staying busy is a great way to combat stress and deal with negative emotions.

Studies have shown that oftentimes when we are busy, we do not have the time to dwell on

feelings of worry, sadness, loneliness, anger, or jealousy, which can be a good thing. This is

what the writer is doing here. She is always learning, trying out a new place to visit, going

out and spending her life with her newfound friends, and most importantly, trying to heal.

Gilbert finds her most comfort in writing. She does not seem to care about the people

and their opinions. She does not bother thinking that people might misunderstand that she is a

woman who left her marriage for her career which is not entirely true. She is also proud that

she has started living her own life. However, she knows that she must stop traveling the

world and become a “solid world citizen again” (35) but she is just not ready yet. Gilbert

juxtaposes her highs and lows quite frequently in the novel. She mocks herself as the odd

member of her family, with her stuff in a top floor bedroom at Catherine’s house which they

had named “The Maiden Aunt’s Quarters” (37), and for her strange statements to young

children about their astrological signs. She worries that she might come to be known as the

crazy aunt Liz and gives funny descriptions of what she could become.

Elizabeth's journey in Rome is filled with adventure and fun. While living there she

explored things that she wanted to try but perhaps never could. She is confident and

independent. It is because of her writing that she can pursue her unfulfilled dreams and

9
embark on new adventures. Modern women show different images from the traditional

expectation of woman. Traditional women were dependent while modern women are

independent. There is a reason why modern women are independent. Today a woman can

have a good education and can support themselves financially. Modern women are

independent because they are capable of earning their own bread and butter.

In performing a narrative analysis of Elizabeth Gilbert's personnel narrative, two

themes emerge which show how female identity is experienced under the influence of third-

wave feminism. The first one revolves around reframing and transcending gender identity,

where we observe how Gilbert comes to understand her identity crisis and how she chooses

to confront it. The second centres on how she comes to reconstruct this new identity by

connecting with a new awareness and understanding of a "universal identity" that

encompasses all human beings. In both the themes, we see how the stories act as vehicles for

discovery and possibility.

Further, in the text, Gilbert realizes that she must rise up from her own will and

assume responsibility for reforming her identity and generating her own future well-being.

Gilbert professes that “the tragedies in my life have been of a personal and last day self-

created nature not apically oppressive. I went through a divorce and depression not a few

centuries of murderous Tyranny. I had a crisis of identity but I also had the resources

financially, artistic, and emotional with which to try to work it out” (124).

In witnessing Gilbert's identity transformation through her use of symbolic means her

readers are presented with a framework they can apply to their own life as well. Therefore,

we can say that in sharing her story Gilbert creates an interactive altar of healing that other

women can visit on loan from as they follow her journey. While reading the novel we can see

that Gilbert is a highly spiritual person. During her stay in Ashram in India, she learns about

the wisdom of the ibis who believe that the goal of spiritual practice is to renew us to our own

10
greatness and the innate goodness that exist within all of us. She feels an interconnectedness

with others as well as the universe. “God resides in you as you” (256). Gilbert belongs to the

Western Community and she is a product of western culture and the Jude Christian tradition

which positions God or higher power outside of the self. Gilbert is presented with a

conflicting point of view in the concept of finding the supreme cell for a universal identity

and its corresponding meditation practice. In other words, the story she is being told is

exactly struck through with her own values and beliefs.

Later in the novel, she comes to accept and believe in the possibility of a universal

identity that is rooted in a higher power and accessible by every living human on the planet as

she discovers her identity continuously. After her own transcendent experience achieved in

meditation, she shares how she comes to accept and believe that she can access this part of

the universal identity. In another example, she exposes this concept further in her explanation

of the meditation chant Hamsa which means I am that in Sanskrit. Critics have tried to

understand how Gilbert comes to accept and believe in the possibility of a universal identity

that is rooted in a higher power and accessible by every living human on the planet. After her

own transcendent experience achieved in meditation, she shares how she came to accept the

belief that she can access and is a part of the universal identity. Writer Elizabeth Gilbert

considers her individual American identity as limiting and finds the solution for her identity

crisis by symbolically identifying with the universal infinite identity that we all share but

seldom realize. What is especially powerful about her realization and acceptance of this

universal identity is the possibility of its presence also to the reader. Given the universal

nature of the identity, all audiences whether the male or female, white or black, privileged or

not have the access to identify with it and perform it as they choose, the only requisite is

being Human.

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 Many feminist Scholars have also allowed the concept of universal identity in the

discussions of interconnectedness. More evidence of this spiritual bridging offered by

feminism can be found in surveys and different conceptualization of female power. One

ground of the interconnections and interdependency of people’s privilege and socio-political

writers of an argument is that feminism philosophy and spirituality conversion of vision of

the subject of the human person is inclusive of all persons. The power Gilbert drew

throughout her interactions with others came from an ability to respond to the possibilities

presented to her and was based on her newfound awareness that identity was connected

somehow to these people in the most fundamental ways. Gilbert's friendships are also an

example of this national agency at work as the women empower each other in various phases

throughout Gilbert's stay in Bali where she befriends Wayan. Wayan is a woman who is

trying to find her way and live with her daughter and comes from a lower-middle-class

background. Even though both of them come from different social and political backgrounds

Gilbert, a professional writer from a white western country vs a medicine woman from Bali

and a divorced single mother from a poor third world country are able to form a relationship

based on a common bond. Both of them renunciate their respective societies and expectations

of them as women.

Gilbert is a thirty-four-year-old woman, who was expected to be married with a nice

house and nice children but by Now instead, she has embarked on a solo journey to find what

will make her happy. Wayan refused to live with her husband because she was trapped into

abuse of marriage in a highly patriarchal culture which caused her to become a social outcast:

to exit marriage in Bali leaves a person alone and unprotected in ways which a westerner

cannot imagine. But just as Gilbert unfriended her identity and refrained her life circumstance

into opportunities for greater happiness Wayan also engaged in her own identity

confrontation by leaving her marriage and moving away from her home. After Gill but

12
finding the perspective on love and relationships transformed through a friendship with my

answer, I feel a great sense of gratitude and we come determined to give back in some way or

another both dream of having their own home. She immediately recognizes the opportunity to

help and ends up using more than eighteen thousand from her family and friends back home

for Wayan. She thinks that when you set out in the world to help yourself, as a result the help

will be multiplied. Change not only involves going deep into the self and expanding out into

the world, it is also the bringing about changes in society. And participating in

community with others brings about the ability to discover new things which we can't find on

our own.

In a fitting response to such a gift change is to change their own self and to act in

resourceful and capable ways which are not dependent on others to complete their goals but

they assume a collective subject the subject which is responsible for the co-creation of

ideologies. While Gilbert goes through the process of confronting and reconstructing an

identity, we can also see that she enacts the personal spirituality that considers the universal

identity and demonstrates the cell of interconnectedness with the people that she needs

throughout her journey of self-discovery. She is the perfect example of a woman who has

constructed potentially a new cell for herself and is responsible for inspiring millions of other

women like her. By embroidering the identities, he interpreted and constructed as a result of a

journey where the final stage of a transformation and her achievement of a new identity

which is responsible for inspiring millions of women till date. At the end of the novel, we see

that Gilbert is transformed by her experience is with the people which she needs she comes

back frequently over the years to Bali to visit her new friend's new home while living in a

very non-traditional but for half-yearly that rejects the US domestic city in favour of

reversing between four continents with a new love. This book encourages us to face all the

challenges of life boldly, in any situation, and not to give up. Elizabeth Gilbert is married and

13
has everything in life one can dream of. But she is not happy and satisfied. So, after a long

struggle, she ends her marriage.

After the divorce, she is filled with sorrow. Thus, she goes into a deep depression. It is

one of the most difficult phases of her life. She loses a lot of weight and thinks of self-

destruction. Finally, she realizes that no one else can make her happy. Certainly, no one can

derive complete happiness in a single lifetime. Only the true living God which is Eternal, is

the source of unending happiness. Weeping in her bathroom, Elizabeth Gilbert prays to God

for the first time in her life, having grown up protestant but with no particular faith. She is a

nominal Christian who prays for rituals. She thus decides to spend four months each in Italy,

India, an Indonesia. She feels overwhelmed with countless emotions surpassing her and

decides to write a letter to God:

Please intervene and help end this divorce. My husband and I have failed at our

marriage and now we are failing at our divorce. This poisonous process is bringing

suffering to us and to everyone who cares about us. I recognize that you are busy with

wars and tragedies and much larger conflicts than the ongoing dispute of one

dysfunctional couple. But it is my understanding that the health of the planet is

affected by the health of every individual on it. (43)

Success on our spiritual journeys, wherever they may take us, is measured not only by the

personal fulfilment that they bring us. The successful spiritual journey will also bring good

and happiness to all those around us. A Spiritual Journey does not need money or

materialistic possessions it just needs heart, mind, and soul. Eat Pray Love is a wonderful

book about the personal journey of the author and it describes Gilbert's midlife meltdown

and her subsequent yearlong global quest for food, pleasure, and salvation. The concept in

the memoir Eat Pray Love is a spiritual journey. In each and every individual there is a

spiritual longing, which can be satisfied by nothing in this world or the next, but which God

14
 alone can satisfy. That is why at the end of his life human is expected to repent and

confesses and turn to God. Every human being at some point in his life cries to God for

mercy and grace.

Holmes writes, “All mankind longs for God, just as young birds open their mouths

for food” EPL (24). Just as the deer in the forest longs for the spring of water, so the human

heart continually thirsts for God with restless longing until it finds Him. One can take a

spiritual journey without leaving home. It is not visiting pilgrimages or religious places

because wherever we go we take our self with us. So just by visiting religious places, one

cannot become a spiritual person the journey to transform ourselves begins with a journey

inward, not outward.

That is an insight as old as the Genesis story of Abraham. Abraham is guided by God

to set forth on a journey, which demands that he leave his country, his homeland, and his

father's house. So, the ability to journey physically is clearly disconnected from the ability to

journey spiritually. However, to make it a necessity is to make the spiritual journey a subset

of travel and leisure, available to the wealthy or to those willing to live a beggar's life. That is

why Abraham's spiritual journey, like all of ours, begins not with a journey outward, but with

a journey inward. The book has two classic elements of spiritual memoir, the inner quest for

spiritual transformation and the outward pilgrimage to faraway places, and it strikes a balance

between devotion and irreverence through the careful use of humour and irony. A spiritual

journey is a worthwhile pursuit, there are many ways for it, and Gilbert particularly focuses

on her spiritual pursuit in the middle section of the book. Some people even call this work a

spiritual memoir. Her use of personification when she describes depression and loneliness

tailing her in Italy, as though police officers, bring life to the story. It brought a light-

heartedness to the story that allows those of us who have not experienced a severe depression

like she has, to imagine her emotions and relate to them.

15
 Overall, Gilbert's casual, descriptive language is an asset to the novel. Although the

comic, colloquial language does make the author's struggles seem less important, it makes the

writing much more interesting, than if she were to simply detail her experiences. She is

assigned the menial task of scrubbing the temple floors, a task symbolic of scrubbing and

cleaning her in order to purify it. We learn of her difficulties at meditation though she had

been doing it on her own before entering the ashram, and she shares the experience where she

finally experiences God and finds herself. Through this book, Gilbert writes about her

journey of self-discovery and finding peace through her travels and experiences across Italy,

India, and Bali, where ultimately, she finds the love of her life and restores the balance which

was apparently missing from it. It is important to chronicle her journey across these three

countries as the people she meets there and the experiences which she had served their

purpose. The purpose to help her find meaning in her life. Being a woman, you are expected

to do things that society expects you to do. These are certain predefined set norms that are

established by society for us. If we do not abide by these norms and choose to take a different

life path society abandons us as an outcast. This is just the way the world works. There is

nothing we can do about it. Women are figures who have two sides. On one hand, women are

beautiful creatures on the other, they are dependent. De Beauvoir asserts this belief in the

introduction of her book:

Woman cannot even dream of exterminating the males. The bond that unites her to

her oppressors is not comparable to any other. The division of the sexes is a biological

fact, not an event in human history. Male and female stand opposed within a

primordial Mitsein, and woman has not broken it. The couple is a fundamental unity

with its two halves riveted together, and the cleavage of society along the line of sex

is impossible. Here is to be found the basic trait of woman: she is the Other in a

totality of which the two components are necessary to one another. (5)

16
 Women are often called mothers, daughters, wives, sisters and have a subtlety of

kindness and compassion. They are expected to give their lives serving these various roles of

a mother, wife and a daughter. This is one of the reasons why it becomes even more essential

to understand why women need to rebel in their lives or at least try to stand up for

themselves. It is this example of a modern woman that Gilbert presents at the forefront. She

rejects the ideas through which society expects her to define her identity. She rejects the idea

to be identified as a woman for whom society has set the roles. She says “I should want to

have a baby. Isn't this what I always wanted?” (43). The truth is that she does not want to

have children. She is a strong independent woman, who wants change and progress in her life

and is capable to fight for her best interests. This text provides learners with real-world

experiences, relationships between society and people where the target language is spoken.

Sometimes our identity is constructed by sociological images; the self.

These images can lead to physical and unphysical forms. Something that is referenced

and which is related to the sensing and mental processes of humans. Based on the opinion

above, it can be concluded that the image of a woman is a picture or reflection of a particular

thing obtained from a woman's consciousness. As Stroud asserted, “stories that include co-

existing and conflicting value structures can expose audiences to new values and ideas….and

still offer good reasons for belief and/or action” (371). This idea is certainly supported by the

fact that Eat Pray Love went on to become an international best-seller and resonated with

millions of women across the globe, pointing to an important cultural moment in the

postmodern, third-wave era. While critical scholars may view Gilbert’s “cherry-picking” of

the Yogi teachings during her visit to India as an appropriation of an ancient eastern

spirituality by a white western woman, we must be reminded of the words of Maya Angelou

that “What you’re supposed to do when you do not like a thing is change it” (100). And as

Alice Walker said, “this is a time when teachings of all traditions are available to us” so why

17
not open ourselves up to the possibilities that other perspectives can offer us (42). We can see

how Gilbert’s use of symbolic means – confronting her identity, re-framing her

circumstances, owning up to her mistakes, taking responsibility for her well-being, etc. – to

find a new identity and more authentic happiness did not come at the expense of others. It

showed her readers a world of infinite possibilities. But in the end, perhaps the most powerful

impact offered by the possibilities presented to us through narratives is to encourage a

moment of pause and self-reflection. As Alice Walker said, “during the pause is the ideal

time to listen to stories [as] stories are capable of teaching us things we all used to know”

(59). As we listen to these stories and the possibilities they present to us, in our moment of

pause and self-reflection, we can begin to find the answers that ring true for each of us. Butler

distinguishes “‘Performance’ from ‘Performativity’ saying that ‘Performativity’ means an act

that not only communicates but also creates an identity” (2). This can be noticed in Gilbert’s

behaviour as well as she refuses to remain married and have kids moving away from already

accepted female gender roles of ‘settling down’. The memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert proves to

be a suitable platform to propagate the concepts of Postmodern Feminism which exists even

in the lives of first-world independent women. Butler’s Performativity, the aspect of non-

essentialism, basically, the standpoints of the theory are given justice in Gilbert’s text. Her

story gives inspiration to thousands of women like her. Gilbert’s work is unique and

captivating. It not only hooks the reader till the end but also gives a valuable lesson to the

readers. It teaches and preaches the importance of freedom and independence in a woman’s

life. It is thus interesting to note how this research is a mental, spiritual, and everyday

behaviour expressed by the author which shows the face and characteristics of all women.

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 Chapter 3

Question Pertaining to Identity in Annie John

Identity is a central concept for contemporary cultural and literary criticism. The word

identity is paradoxical in itself, which means both sameness and distinctiveness. It is unclear

whether we can derive one singular meaning of ‘identity’ and its even vaguer terminological

twin, the ‘self’. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar find the women’s quest for self-definition

“the underlying plot of nineteenth-century writing by women, while Elaine Showalter sees

‘self-discovery’, a search for identity as the main theme of women’s literature since the

1920s” (72). Feminists such as Simone De Beauvoir claim that the term women is a

sociological construct. In this sense gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency

from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time-an

identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.

By extending feminist insights about the differences between male and female

personality structures into identity theory, however, we discover that for every aspect of

identity as men define it, female experience varies from the male model. "Female identity is a

process" and writing by women engages us in this process as the female self seeks to define

itself in the experience of creating art (Gardiner 2). The hero is said to be the author’s

daughter, bonds between women structure the deepest layers of female personality and

establish the patterns to which literary identifications are analogous. Contemporary women's

literature promises that a sense of full, valued, and congruent female identity may form in the

continuing process of give and take that re-creates both self and other in a supportive

community of women.

Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan writer. Her works are known for their

autobiographical overtones. She came into notice after the publication of her first book At the

19
Bottom of The River in 1983. Three subsequent books were produced and the volume of

Kincaid scholarship has also grown accordingly. Many critics, scholars, and readers have

shown a fascination for Kincaid's story of immigration and name change. Many have also

delved into the idea of creation and recreation of identity. Kincaid's fiction addresses the

search for a self, and her protagonists much like Annie John, often escape from one set of

circumstances to reinvent themselves somewhere far away, their change of identity acting as

emptying of oneself, enabling them to start fresh.

The idea of identity has been much talked about in the novel. A number of critics have

even explained the phenomenon of escape and re-formation of identity. Some scholars have

made the connection of Annie’s growing up in a post-colonial environment and seeking

separation not only from a mother but from the influence of a mother country as well. Other

critics such as Evelyn O' Callaghan have closely studied Kincaid and other West Indian

women writers from a feminist perspective, observing the link between colonial ideology and

the limitations of assigned gender roles. It can also be noted that the colonial race issues have

helped shape the identities of Kincaid and her characters.

Kincaid's novel Annie John portrays a representative childhood on the island of

Antigua. Kincaid's free admission of autobiographical fiction allows the reader to believe that

Annie's childhood bears a certain similarity to Kincaid's and by extension is tied to Annie's

own upbringing. Examining Annie John from the angle of discovering the difficulties faced

by black colonial children in Antigua - the barriers and presumptions imposed by the

colonizers, and how this affects identity formation- leads to an understanding of what Annie

might be trying to escape from. Essentially Annie John is a novel which is a study of both

postcolonialism as well as third wave feminism. The term postcolonial encompasses political

and cultural studies. But it has a metaphorical meaning in the understanding of the text.

Kinkaid’s works such as Annie John, Lucy, The Autobiography of My Mother portray the

20
connections between human interactions and the world shaping force of colonialism,

questioning both. In the novel, Kincaid has combined the body, the environment, and the

fundamentals of postcolonialism and feminism through the coming of age of a young girl

traveling away from her Caribbean home in the midst of self-awakening. It is notable how

Annie is migrating to a foreign land offering no potentiality of return. The character of Annie

is a manifestation of Kincaid’s own self. There is also no real time in any of her works and

Kincaid resists direct cultural references that may pinpoint her narrator in any specific era or

decade.

Writers of colour are not averse to the idea of feminism. Their writing is read

extensively within the feminist protest tradition. Many of these writers do not consciously

engage in feminist discourse. Jamaica Kincaid has detested the idea of belonging to or even

being categorized as belonging to any school of thought. However, her writing necessarily

talks about women and the concepts of feminist discourse. In the novel Annie John, by using

the autobiographical first-person narrative and protagonist, Kincaid offers a voice that

articulates a female coming of age experience in a particular socio-cultural milieu. Kincaid

has brilliantly depicted new ways of female development. This might be due to the fact that

her writing is intimate and personal. She has stated in an interview that her writing is an

interior, personnel kind of writing, one which is characteristic of the nature of feminist

discourse. Her works have contributed significantly to women's literature in that they

examine the female role.

One of the most intricate questions dealt with by Caribbean writers in recent years has

been that of identity. Conventional circumstances, along with additional factors of pluralism

continue to mark Caribbean society and culture. Annie John talks about these issues and

much more. The novel begins when the narrator Annie John is ten years old. She is spending

her summer holiday with her father outside of town. Her father is a carpenter in the city. The

21
narrator is shown playing with the pigs and watching their chicken. Annie is quite an

innocent kid. One day when her mother tells her that a kid has died, Annie is shocked. She

had never known that children died. In a nutshell, the nuances of the opening chapter

introduce its narrative style. This chapter is told from the perspective of little Annie who

matures as she ages and this remains consistent for the later part of the novel. The novel is

episodic in nature. Each of the chapters in Annie John was published as separate stories in the

new yorker. The opening chapter successfully serves its purpose of developing the main

characters which are explained in the latter part of the narrative. The specific psychoanalytic

concepts which bear upon and explicate Annie's wish for separation are impacted not only by

the exigencies of Caribbean history but by its racial pluralities as well.

The next chapter cuts to the heart of the relationship between Annie and her mother.

In its opening segments, Annie depicts her early life as a small paradise in which she and her

mother share most moments of her summer vacation. They spent many precious moments

together. Annie and her mother share the most intimate and close relationship. This is

signified by the presence of water as they bathe in it. Water plays a significant role in the

whole narrative. It is shown as a connector and disconnector, as a source of nourishment and

revitalization, as a medium that unites and separates. Annie and her mother eat breakfast

together and shop together in town. Annie believes that her mother is the smartest and best

mother, who also is extraordinarily beautiful. She is a compassionate mother who knows how

to cater to the needs of her kids. Annie finds her mother to be without fault and assumes that

they will always live in total peace with one another. This happens until the sense of

otherness begins to develop in Annie which Beauvoir talks about.

De Beauvoir uses the term ‘Other’ throughout The Second Sex to diagnose the

female’s secondary position in society as well as within her own patterns of thought. One of

her chief goals in undertaking the project is to answer the question of why woman is the

22
Other. De Beauvoir explains that according to the philosopher Hegel, reality is made up of

the interplay of opposing forces. Self-understanding is much the same. For a being to define

itself, it must also define something in opposition to itself. It is this tussle of defining

something other than your-self which leads Annie with a distant relationship with her mother.

Annie John, even though set in the West Indies and about a black Caribbean girl, is a

work whose universally felt experience goes beyond allowing the novel to be neatly

categorized as a piece of "ethnic" or " women's" writing. Born on Antigua, the island in

which she sets the novel, Jamaica Kincaid catches many of the ways of being peculiar to this

place. Maybe it is because Kincaid makes the setting home which is why readers find it so

easy to slip into the story. Not only do we feel at home in Antigua, but we also find ourselves

in familiar territory as we view the world from inside Kincaid's protagonist. The narrative

explores Annie’s growth from age ten through seventeen.

All human beings are unique, and few can articulate this complexity with as much

ease as Kincaid has allowed Annie John to do. People grow up, and become detached from

their loved ones, just as Annie does in due course of the narrative. We know from the movies

that we are supposed to love perfectly, but we have always felt more deeply that life is not

like that. Even though the voice in the novel is that of a seventeen-year-old looking back on

childhood experience, Kincaid does not make the mistake of analysing or interpreting her

character her readers, and perhaps Annie, at seventeen, is not yet far enough away from

childhood to do that. It is this immediacy of the child's perspective that is appealing. Kincaid

doesn't waste her time, in explaining the follies of nature to the readers. The immediacy and

credibility as well as the universality of Kincaid's novel are felt through her use of exacting

detail, detail which is true to her Antiguan setting, and which is rarely predictable or

superfluous.

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 A girl's growing up seems a simple enough story, and Kincaid does tell it in a brief

148 pages. But the story does not stop; there is no real ending when a character you have

lived with steps, at seventeen, onto the boat that will take her away from her childhood. The

narrative reveals how an individual’s journey of self-discovery never ends irrespective of

his/her gender or biological sex. Kincaid’s story is about one brilliant girl's journey to self-

awareness, this journey further awakens the readers to open up to their respective selves.

The mother-daughter relationship drives the plot in Annie John and is its primary

theme. This relationship has its own ups and downs. The difficulties in this relationship arise

due to Annie's inability to accept the fact that she has a separate self. The girls befriend one

another in an effort to find substitutes for maternal love which ultimately proves to be

disappointing. The dynamics of the mother-daughter relationship have an important role to

serve in Kincaid’s stories and have appeared in her other works such as Lucy and The

Autobiography of My Mother.

Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John focuses on gender relations and it’s the pattern

throughout the novel. Gender relations also affect the mother-daughter relationship. Outside

of the actual plot and the main characters, Annie John displays these gender relations

specifically and clearly when she says:

When I was a small child, my mother and I used to go down to Rat Island on

Sunday’s right after church, so that I could bathe in the sea. It was at a time when I

was thought to have weak kidneys and a bath in the sea had been recommended as a

strengthening remedy. Rat Island wasn’t a place many people went to anyway, but by

climbing down some rocks my mother had found a place that nobody seemed to have

ever been. (34)

With gender relations being an independent theme versus the mother-daughter

relationship the two themes tie in through the characters and the effect the characters have on

24
each other. To begin the mother-daughter relationship does indeed drive the plot, but not only

does it drive the plot it also serves as the primary theme of the novel.

The way the two themes tie in is through gender relations having an absolute negative

effect on the overall mother-daughter relationship that consistently exists and is highlighted

throughout the novel.

“I ate my supper outside, alone, under the breadfruit tree, and my mother said that she

would not be kissing me good night later, but when I climbed into bed she came and kissed

me anyway” (32). Initially, both Annie and her mother share an intimate and loving

relationship but as the novel progresses, they drift apart from each other.

Although Annie’s father seems presentable like a good man, he is a part of the overall

unequal gender relations that exist in Antigua. The first very outstanding and almost shocking

correlation readers see of gender relations is the fact that Annie’s mother is thirty years

younger than her father. In Antigua, much like general society, women are unequally treated

compared to men. Men can be more open and promiscuous, but women are expected to be

conservative. Before meeting Annie’s mother her father had been involved in many different

sexual affairs. The significance of gender relations doesn’t necessarily stem from the text but

from certain situations embedded in the text. With Annie John being the narrator readers

don’t have to ponder her thoughts, situations, and feelings because she presents all three

through text. The novel frequently focuses on the mother-daughter relationship as well as

gender issues. Annie John is frequently scolded and feels detached at times from her mother.

She is evidently misjudged just by the unsymmetrical weight of gender relations.

Jamaica Kincaid allows readers to not stray away from the overall message but to

indulge in it further. In a novel such as this one that possesses many different themes it’s

challenging to find a distinct pattern and even though this is difficult there are streams of

patterns intertwined within the plot. These patterns are all controlled and manipulated by

25
Annie John so that readers can understand clearly why she makes the decisions she makes

throughout life and the novel. By the end of the novel, Jamaica Kincaid gives readers an

overview of colonial life not only in Antigua but also as a young girl with a struggling

relationship with her mother and a colonialist society pressuring her to become someone and

something she’s not. By the end of the novel, Annie becomes sad, frustrated, and isolated as

she distances herself from anything and everyone, she has established a relationship with in

life, but this is only one interpretation. She eventually extends that isolation by choosing to

leave home for nursing school in England.

Initially, Annie considers her identity to be intertwined with that of her mother. The

mother’s Dominican past is opposed to Annie’s Antiguan cultural formation. The idea of

racial difference as a subset of foreignness initially terminates the primary stage in which

Annie seeks her identity through her mother. As a result of this Annie’s rebellion,

malevolence, and hatred towards her mother develop. Her eventual departure from her

homeland is the outcome of her recognition of existence that she has outgrown and a step

towards the establishment of a newer more valid one. What matters in Annie John is the

female community and the idea of re-writing the history of colonial and patriarchal

oppression against third-world women. The book attempts to re-write history from a black

perspective and focuses on the black female empowerment of a Caribbean community, rather

than on the reproduction of third-world women in a Western context. Thus, the concepts of

racial difference and of identity play a major role in this text, one directly influenced by the

structure and influence of the Caribbean region. It is the problem of establishing a valid

identity within this context, that makes Annie John’s case unique and provides us with

relevant points of analytical reference. According to De Beauvoir in order to bring about

substantial changes in society, young boys and girls must be educated differently from the

outset irrespective of the community or ethnicity to which they belong. Since they are born

26
equal, the possibility exists of their being equal in adulthood as well as in childhood—but it

becomes the responsibility of society to change its narrow perspectives. Annie John is

essentially a bildungsroman novel, which gives the readers a deeper insight into the formative

years of Annie which ultimately shape her personality.

In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman is a literary genre, that focuses on the

psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood, in which

character change is important. A bildungsroman novel focuses on the character’s growth

from childhood to adulthood. Typically, the character experiences an emotional and

sociological awakening that causes him or her to perceive things in a different manner than

he or she had seen it as a child. In traditional bildungsroman novels, the character must

struggle against the society to shape his or her identity. The struggle to find your own identity

is a manifestation of the struggles against society. In the novel, Annie goes against the social

expectations of traditional female gender roles. She goes against society and authority at

home and at school, as she has no desire to settle and get married. She also becomes an

epitome of a girl who stands up for herself and rejects the set norms of society that predefine

her role as a woman. Annie John can be seen as a coming-of-age novel for Antigua where

Annie comes to realize the negative effects that colonization and therefore British Culture has

had on her Antiguan identity. Essentially Antigua must realize its own culture and break free

of its own colonizer, Great Britain. Annie begins her life in a provincial area where she

quickly perceives constraints on her "natural" development. She grows frustrated with her

family, school, and friends. Finally, at a fairly early age, she leaves the repression of home

for the "real" education that occurs in a sophisticated, worldly, and often urban setting. The

meaning of the coming-of-age novel differs significantly among nationalities and periods, but

there are certain similarities that cross-cultural lines. The bildungsroman has a history of only

turning the boy into a man not a girl into a woman. Kincaid has been successful in breaking

27
these stereotypes to build a character that breaks conventions of masculine critical history. the

Bildungsroman tradition can be interpreted as actually relying on often overlooked romantic

elements which integrate and unify Annie John's complex mixture of bonding and questing.

The Bildungsroman and the mother-daughter plot combine to form a novelistic

version of a contemporary female quest. At a certain level, many incidents in the novel

appear to be in keeping with typical mother-daughter relationships. The book also evokes the

elements of the natural world displaying unity and harmony. Kincaid’s subtle arrangement of

themes calls for more than bonding interpretations. It calls for a more psychological quest

reading. Annie’s description of her childhood supports a more mythical as well as a deeper

understanding of personality development. Annie recalls the memories of bathing in the sea

with her mother and compares this activity to “the picture of sea mammals. Annie and her

mother merge into one being, reliving the birth experience. In another scene, Annie and her

mother create “a special bath in which the barks and the flowers of many different trees,

together with all sorts of oils, were boiled in the same large cauldron” (15). Even the

mother’s odour connects Annie to nature. Kincaid creates an environment of wholeness,

richness, and innocence. Annie uses the metaphor of nature as a description of her childhood

maternal connection. The nature element is shown as a theme that nurtures and protects. At

another moment Annie describes this relationship as perfect harmony. Throughout the novel,

Kincaid gives evidence for a link between the romantic and psychological concepts. She

introduces the red girl and continues to provide the readers with romantic themes for her

maturation and eventual fall from the previously described translucent wholeness. The red

girl eventually encourages Annie to break away from the primordial sympathy of the parent-

child. The journey from innocence to experience begins from this point onwards. It seems

that Kincaid is suggesting that women characters should not be imprisoned by the narrow

depictions of something. They are capable of recreating and even subverting them, and in the

28
process, call into question the quest’s assumed authority in labelling the women as

subservient to men.

Much has been written about the mother-daughter conflict in Kincaid's fiction, but

adding race to the situation puts a different spin on the quest for identity. Annie's mother is a

Dominican Creole, and at the same time that Annie perceives her mother's attempts at

domination, she also becomes aware of her mother's cultural difference. Just as the

problematic relationship with her mother has opened Annie's eyes to her mother's 'whiteness',

it has also made Annie more conscious of her own blackness. She says: "My skin was black

in a way I had not noticed before, as if someone had thrown a lot of soot out of a window just

when I was passing by and it had all fallen on me" (94).

Annie seems dissatisfied with her blackness, emphasized by her comparison with

soot. While she may have taken her skin colour for granted before, she is now approaching

the heightened awareness of adulthood during which she perceives that black skin is regarded

by the powerful as the inferior half of the black/white dyad and, as Murdoch would point out,

the feeling of otherness is exacerbated by her recent awareness of her mother's contrasting

'whiteness'. It is at this age as well that Annie begins to recognize the characterizations in

Enid Blyton's stories as blatantly racist. Annie's solution is to distance herself from the

society that embraces such preconceptions and to turn all her efforts inward in the search for

a new self.

Post-colonial feminist writing is the testimony to this resistance against the previous

generations’ acceptance of the European male-dominated literary world. Critics also say that

African novels can portray a woman as the hero of her own life. This is perhaps what Jamaica

Kincaid is trying to do through the character of Annie John. She says:

Recognizing me immediately, she waved back just as wildly, and we continued to do

this until she became just a dot in the matchbox-size launch swallowed up in the big

29
 blue sea. I went back to my cabin and lay down on my berth. Everything trembled as

if it had a spring at its very centre. I could hear the small waves lap-lapping around

the ship. They made an unexpected sound, as if a vessel filled with liquid had been

placed on its side and now was slowly emptying out (144).

The presence of postcolonial identity in the book needs a deep discussion. Postcolonial

feminism emerged in response to colonialism and the Eurocentric view of feminism and

women. Postcolonial feminism rejects the idea of oppression against women being universal

and instead encourages us to take a feminist intersectional approach to the issues. The

division of first-world and third-world feminism allows third-world women to critique the

way in which first-world feminism tended to generalize women and oppression of them as a

whole, not taking into consideration economic, geographical, and historical differences. But

despite her portrayal of subtle fierceness in Annie, and despite a heightened awareness about

race and history, Kincaid ultimately advocates reinvention toward simple, quiet humanity. As

she states in the final pages of A Small Place:

Of course, ‘the whole thing is, once you cease to be a master, once you throw off

your master's yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are just a human being, and

all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves,

once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings

(81).

In one instance from the book, Annie wishes that she had been named Enid, "after

Enid Blyton, the author of the first books I had discovered on my own" (51). Annie

acknowledges the racial content in her later years. She is aware of the injustices of the past,

and aware of exactly who is responsible for those injustices. Annie looks at her English

classmate, Ruth, who "was such a dunce and came from England and had yellow hair", and

sees her as the descendant of the traditionally powerful: Perhaps she wanted to be in England,

30
where no one would remind her constantly of the terrible things her ancestors had done;

perhaps she had felt even worse when her father was a missionary in Africa and Her

ancestors had been the masters, “while ours had been the slaves” (40). She had such a lot to

be ashamed of, and by being with us every day she was always being reminded. We could

look everybody in the eye, for our ancestors had done nothing wrong except just sit

somewhere, defenceless” (76).

The initial and final contrasts of detachment seen between Annie and her mother can

be noted. The closeness of Annie to her mother, the extent to which she identifies with the

maternal image, is initially valorised in fact through their mutual participation in things like

the ritualized baths, where the description of obeah practices-obeah being the Antiguan term

for a local form of "voudoun"-provides an element of added realism beyond the purely

geographical (14). This closeness is elaborated upon further by Annie's description of her

initiation into the domestic world of the period: "I spent the day following my mother around

and observing the way she did everything" (15). She states how important she felt to be with

her mother and, beyond the culinary realism of describing local dishes and ingredients,

indicates that her mother simply wanted to "include [her] in everything" (17). Finally, here,

Annie's description of her mother begins by equating her beauty and her daughter's feelings

for her with those of a queen, whose head would in fact have been on the sixpence to which

she refers. But as they grow older, they also grow apart. The fading relationship of Annie

with her mother is a symbolization of her fading relationship with her motherland.

When Annie is moving to a completely foreign land Annie John and her mother look

at each other with smiles as they wave goodbye, yet Annie John states that "the opposite of

that was in my heart," again showing us the sadness of not being able to fully recover the

body of her colonized mother (147). As Annie John goes to her cabin on the ferry that takes

her away from Antigua, she lays down on her "berth" while hearing a sound "as if a vessel

31
filled with liquid had been placed on its side and now was slowly emptying out" (148). The

symbol of water in the book Annie John is mainly connected to the nurturing and motherhood

of Annie John, the spilling of the vessel as the emptying of the womb symbolizes the loss of

safety, Antiguan culture, and nurture for Annie John. Annie John tries to exclude men and

patriarchy from being in the forefront of the book, focusing on female companionship,

family, and community. The gesture of cutting out patriarchy in the book is Kincaid´s

suggestion of a female allegiance towards the patriarchal and colonizing community, giving

the individual an ability to redefine their relationship to the community and to oneself.

Annie John presents an example of a woman who is struggling to come to terms with

the limitations of her cultural and economic differences to create a new one for herself. De

Beauvoir says “the “emancipated” woman, on the contrary, wants to be active and prehensile

and refuses the passivity the man attempts to impose on her” (49). In the novel, Annie rejects

the obligations which her society imposes on her. As Annie John cannot exist in the

postcolonial environment of Antigua, she fails to construct a hybrid self and to de-colonize

herself as a postcolonial subject. It is questionable, however whether Annie is content about

leaving her hometown. Annie John can be seen as attempting to answer the question of what

happens when one is taught to desire independence in a postcolonial setting, the successful

initiation of British culture could create such a split in the postcolonial subject that the subject

in question would be unable to resonate in that setting, and the only answer is to turn to self-

imposed exile away from her colonized mother and ultimately motherland.

While the characters show how the colonial women's identities are constructed within

the oppression of colonialism and patriarchy, Kincaid’s writing also displays community,

female empowerment, and patriarchy that is seen from the perspective of a colonized

individual. In a nutshell, Annie is a character bound to her colonial context. The writing of

Jamaica Kincaid, however, tries to write against the marginalization of colonized women.

32
Annie John's character reveals the extent of patriarchy and oppression of which she becomes

a subject, while at the same time how she tries to challenge this hegemony and finds herself

inextricably intertwined with the conventions of society. It is a powerful story about a girl

who rebuilds herself in the face of double oppression and rewriting history from her own

perspective. It is a work that does not portray women as oppressed but rather shows female

empowerment, having the book stand on its own in a postcolonial context. Annie's quest to

rebuild herself as something other has an important political stance. Annie explores the

concepts of colonialism and patriarchy while also attempting to raise questions about female

identity and women empowerment in a doubly oppressive socio-cultural milieu. This tale

advocates a simple message of humanity in its core theme, in the process of sociological and

psychological awakening of Annie.

An important aspect of feminism is witnessed in the book Annie john which is its

strong hold on creation and recreation of identity, the repercussions of which lead Annie's

exile from her country. The analysis of the text shows that Annie leaves her country in order

to move forward and accomplish her goals. Annie knows what is best for her and what she

desires the most. As a result of her conditioning in relation to an English standard she is

unable to identify herself outside of this standard. She is therefore trying to escape from one

identity to reinvent another in a foreign land. She finds a new solution to step out of this

shadowed identity to distance herself from the society that embraces such preconceptions and

to turn all her efforts inward in the search for a new self. She is uncertain about what lies

ahead. In this process she is trying to discard the "excess baggage" of her colonised identity

before beginning a new journey altogether.

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 Chapter 4

Conclusion

The discussed texts Eat Pray Love and Annie John engage with the ideas associated with the

construction and reconstruction of women's identity. Both the texts challenge the foundations

of gender construction in different ways. Beauvoir and Butler, who present views associated

with identity discourse agree with the idea that “one is not born, but rather becomes a

woman” (Beauvoir 256). While Beauvoir is concerned with what being a woman means;

Butler largely focuses on the phenomenological understanding of corporeal acts:

In order to describe the gendered body, a phenomenological theory of constitution

requires an expansion of the conventional view of acts to mean both that which

constitutes meaning and that through which meaning is performed or enacted. In other

words, the acts by which gender is constituted bear similarities to performative acts

within theatrical contexts. (512)

This conventional view of acts has been challenged in both texts. Annie’s detachment

from her mother and ultimately her motherland is caused by the development of Annie’s

individuality. Individuality and consciousness are the constructs of the mind, which are, to a

large extent, defined by our external atmosphere. Sociologist Charles Cooley’s words seem

suitable here, “I am not what I think I am, I am not what you think I am, I am, what I think

that you think that I am” (Cooley 61). Here, Cooley means that we as humans cannot help but

be influenced by perceptions that others have of us. It is the external forces that determine

what we think and how we think. Hence, the concept of self is built not in solitude, but within

a social setting. In this way society and individuals are inseparable.

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 Thus, Annie is able to move past the baggage of her post-colonial identity and reinvent

herself completely only by moving to a foreign land and Elizabeth is able to reconstruct

herself by traveling to different parts of the world.

When Elizabeth moves to Bali, she feels liberated. The sense of liberation she

experiences is a manifestation of her newfound identity. In spite of feeling emancipated, she

again starts to doubt and stop herself from falling in love with a man all over again. The

important thing to consider here is where does this doubt originate from? It originates from the

same norms predefined by the society that a divorced woman does not have the right to live a

respectable life let alone a happy one. The character Wayan in Eat Pray Love is the victim of

this mindset.

The memoir by Gilbert propagates the concepts of third-wave feminism and reflects

Beauvoir and Butler’s ideas on identity formation. On the other hand, Annie’s coming of

age shows how the identity of a woman belonging to a colonized country is constructed

within the oppression of colonialism as well as patriarchy. Kincaid herself valorises the

difference of her original cultural and geographical text. By writing about herself, she writes

about all the people who represent her cultural domain and subaltern. Nonetheless, Kincaid’s

own Caribbean self-reflexive perception provides the narrative baseline for the story. The

maternal\filial conflict, the attempt to name and to be oneself, the struggles with difference

and biculturality, all herald a skilful, conscious, and controlled narrator, as well as a

marvellous addiction to the canon of Caribbean literature. In both these texts, the

protagonists are able to recreate a life on their own terms because they are empowered.

Empowerment is the result of women’s education. Hence, the most essential step leading to

woman’s emancipation is women’s education. Beauvoir believes that the only way to a

women’s liberation is through education. "To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her

to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent

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existence and she will continue nonetheless to exist for him also: mutually recognising each

other as subject, each will yet remain for the other” (767). The refusal to adhere to this

confinement can be achieved only through education.

Virginia Woolf, one of the most important modernists of 20th century says that women

writing about themselves is extremely crucial. For this, first, women need to have a room of

their own. Historically, women have been unable to get out of the vicious entrapment of

home and hearth. Leisure, time, privacy and financial independence; the components which

underwrite all literary production, have not been provided to them. Thus “A woman must

have money and room of her own if she is to write fiction” (Woolf 1). Improvement in

women’s suffrage can be brought about only through expanding feminist discourse which can

only be achieved by empowering and educating all women.

The works written prior to the first wave feminism provided little room for women to

voice their opinions, thoughts and experiences openly. However, as a result of feminist

struggles and movements women have come out to explore, talk about and even question

gender relations with respect to sexuality. This the reason why women writing about

themselves is the most important aspect of all feminist discourses. The centralities of women

in their narratives shows that the centrality of women exists in the society. Annie and

Elizabeth belong to culturally, socially and economically different societies. They belong to

different age group and ethnicity yet they stand united in their essence to stand up for

themselves. As women, these two characters show that change in women's suffrage is not-

inevitable. It is something which needs to be demanded, even if it costs standing against the

society or sacrificing going away from your loved ones. The stories of independent female

characters such as Annie and Elizabeth question gender relations in different ways. The

nuances of identity discourse can be applied to both Eat Pray Love and Annie John for a

refined understanding of the entire feminist literary corpus.

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 Works Cited and Consulted

Primary Sources

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything. Bloomsbury

Publication, 2020.

Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John: A Novel. Reprint, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.

Secondary Sources

Basotia, Surabhi, and Arpit Kothari. “Postmodern Feminist Perspectives in Eat Pray Love.”

Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 28, no. 4, 2020.

doi.org/10.47836/pjssh. Accessed 27 April 2022.

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. 5th ptg., Alfred A. Knopf, 1964.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge, 2006.

---. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist

Theory.” Theatre Journal, vol. 40, no. 4, 1998, pp. 519-531.

Caton, Louis F. “Romantic Struggles: The Bildungsroman and Mother-Daughter Bonding in

Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” MELUS, vol. 21, no. 3, 1996, pp. 125–42,

doi.org/10.2307/467978. Accessed 27 April 2022.

Choi, Soonyang. “Judith Butler’s Gender Performativity and Its Theological Application.”

Theological Forum, vol. 96, 2019, pp. 265–93. doi.org/10.17301/tf.2019.06.96.265.

Accessed 27 April 2022.

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Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “On Female Identity and Writing by Women.” Critical Inquiry, vol.

8, no. 2, 1981, pp. 347–61. www.jstor.org/stable/1343167. Accessed 24 April 2022.

Kristin, Lukow Natalia, et al. “Women Image in Elizabeth Gilbert By Eat Pray And Love.”

Journal of English Language and Literature Teaching, vol. 4, no. 2, 2021.

doi.org/10.36412/jellt.v4i2.2390. Accessed 25 April 2022.

Murdoch, H. Adlai. “Severing The (M)Other Connection: The Representation of Cultural

Identity in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” Callaloo, vol. 13, no. 2, 1990, p. 325.

doi.org/10.2307/2931710. Accessed 25 April 2022.

Waugh, Patricia, and Fiona. “Feminisms.” Literary Theory and Criticism. OUP, 2006.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. Penguin Books, 2004.

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