트라우마로 존재하는 어머니/모국 극복하기: 자메이카 킨케이드의 『루시』

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how Lucy tries to overcome the mother/motherland represented as a trauma in the theme of mother- daughter conflict and proceeds to mold her independent identity as a writer in Lucy. This paper also focuses on analysing how Lucy’s troubled relationship with her mother is represented as a metaphor for her troubled relation with her colonial Antigual culture and colonial motherland. As the critic Leigh Gilmore remarked, “the trauma surrounding the mother- daughter relationship is enigmatic in Lucy” (108). Despite Kincaid’s frankness in discussing Lucy’s trauma and by extension her own trauma, there remains a reluctance on Kincaid’s part to describe in specific details her shameful and painful secrets of her mother and past life. Lucy’s first reaction to get rid of the shadow of her mother staying as a part of her self is to return maternal contempt with countercontempt by showing her defiant anger and intense animosity and by embodying a “bad” identity such as a “slut” and Lucifier. However, at the end of Lucy, Lucy overcomes her fierce rage and shame toward her mother/motherland and proceeds toward the stage of recovery from her trauma through her descent into mourning. Lucy shows her will to reconcile with herself and to create her new identity as a writer by mourning the loss of her mother/motherland that she has felt almost intrinsic to her being and considered as her trauma.