UNIT 23 JAMAICA KINCAID: "ON SEEING

ENGLAND FOR THE FIRST TIMES'

Structure

Objectives
Introduction
Jamaica Kincaid: A Biographical Note
"On Seeing England for the First Time" - An Introduction
23.3.1 Text
23.3.2 Glossary
Theme
Prose Style
Let Us Sum Up
Suggested Reading
Answers to Ewercises

23.0 OBJECTIVES

After reaL:ng this unit, you will

appreciate that this is an essay and not a travelogue which the title
seems to suggest;
relate the essay to the author's major theme in her writings;
identify examples of:
1) sarcasm
2) irony
3) pathos

23.1 INTRODUCTION

In the previous unit, you saw Bacon's attempt to look at his subject in an
objective way. It was a dispassionate account written in a style characterized
by brevity. In contrast, we have Jamaica Kincaid's essay which is personal
and reveals the author's passionate indignation, characteristic of a colonized
person against her colonizer. This essay is in keeping with Samuel Johnson's
definition of an essay as 'a loose sally of the mind' and is limited in its range
as it reflects the writer's anger against the English who had colonized her
country.

23.2 JAMAICA KINCAID: A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The black writer Jamaica Kincaid was born in 1949 as Elaine Potter
Richardson in the Caribbean island of Antigua, and had her schooling there.
Although she was very intelligent, her education was interrupted when her
third brother was born as her stepmother was sick and could no long support
them, She went to themunitedStates at the age of seventeen; she was supposed
to be the bread writer for the family, but refused to send the money home, and
instead tried to get an education. She studied photography at the New York Jamaica Kincaid:
School of Social Research, and attended Franconia College in New Hampshire "On Seeing England
for the First Time"
for some time. In 1973, she changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid because
her family disapproved of her writing, and she did not want them to know
about it. She began writing articles and short stories, and took up a job with A

the magazine The New Yorker, where she worked as a staff writer from 1976
to 1995. She married Allen Shawn, the son of William Shawn, The New
Yorker's longtime editor. Jamaica Kincaid is the author of novels, short
stories, and non-fiction works. She is a visiting professor and teaches creative
writing at Harvard University.

Issue of race, gender, class and colonialism dominate her writing, and the
rnother-daughter relationship is a recurrent theme. Her first work, At the
Bottom of the River (1983) was a volume of short stories based on childhood
in the Caribbean. Her first novel, Annie John (1985) set in Antigua, explores
the fierce ups and downs of a daughter7; love for her mother and her
motherland. Other novels include A Small Place (1988), Lucy (1990), which
begin with a girl leaving Antigua for America (as Jamaica Kincaid herself did)
and The Autobiography of my Mother (1995), a first person narrative in which
a woman looks back on her troubled life. The essay "On Seeing England for
the First Time" was first published in Harper's Magazine in 1991.

Speaking about her major theme in all her writings, she said: " I was always
being told I should be something, and then my whole upbringing was
something I was not: it was English".
After you finish reading the essay, you will understand the essence of the
above statement of Jamaica Kincaid

23.3 "ON SEEING ENGLAND FOR THE FIRST TIME" -

AN INTRODUCTION

As is evident from its title, the essay was written after Kincaid's first visit to
England. In this Unit, we shall examine both the subject matter and the
manner of presentation in the essay, and also take note of the various literary
devices used by Kincaid to express her personal feelings on being colonized.
Non-Fictional Prose-I: 23.3.1 Text
Essays, Letters,
Travelogues
When I saw England for the first time, I was a child in school sitting at a desk.
The England I was looking at was laid out on a map gently, beautifully,
delicately, a very special jewel; it lay on a bed of sky blue - the background of
the map - its yellow form mysterious, because though it looked like a leg of
mutton, it could not really look like anything so familiar as a leg of mutton
because it was England - with shadings of pink and green, unlike any
shadings of pink and green I had seen before, squiggly veins of red running in
every direction. England was a special jewel all right, and only special people
got to wear it. The people who got to wear England were English people. They
wore it well and they wore it everywhere: in jungles, in deserts, on plains, on
top of the highest mountains, on all the oceans, on all the seas. When my
teacher had pinned this map up on the blackboard, she said, "This is England"
- and she said it with authority, seriousness, and adoration, and we all sat up.
It was as if she had said, "This is Jerusalem, the place you will go to when you
die but only if you have been good." We understood then - we were meant to
understand then - that England was to be our source of myth and the source
from which we got our sense of reality, our sense of what was meaningful, our
sense of what was meaningless - and much about our own lives and much
about the very idea of us headed that last list.

At the time I was a child sitting at my desk seeing England for the first time, I
was already very familiar with the greatness of it. Each morning before I left
for school, I ate a breakfast of half a grapefruit, an egg, bread and butter and a
slice of cheese, and a cup of cocoa; or half a grapefruit, a bowl of oat
porridge, bread and butter and a slice of a cheese, and a cup of cocoa. The
can of cocoa was often left on the table in front of me. It had written on it the
name of the company, the year the company was established, and the words
"Made in England." Those words, "Made in England," were written on the
box the oats came in too. They would also have been written on the box the
shoes I was wearing came in; the bolt of gray linen cloth lying on the shelf of
a store from which my mother had bought three yards to make the uniform
that I was wearing had written along its edge those three words. The shoes I
wore were made in England; so were my socks and cotton undergarments and
the satin ribbons I wore tied at the end of two plaits of my hair. My father,
who might have sat next to me at breakfast, was a carpenter and
cabinetmaker. The shoes he wore to work would have been made in England,
as were his khaki shirt and trousers, his underpants and undershirt, his socks,
and brown felt hat. Felt was not the proper material from which a hat that was
expected to provide shade from the hot sun should have been made, but my
father must have seen and admired a picture of an Englishman wearing such a
hat in England, and this picture that he saw must have been so compelling that
it caused him to wear the wrong hat for a hot climate most of his long life.
And this hat - a brown felt hat - became so central to his character that it was
the first thing he put on in the morning as he stepped out of bed and the last
thing he took off before he stepped back into bed at night. As we sat at
breakfast, a car might go by. The car, a Hillman or a Zephyr, was made in
England. The very idea of the meal itself, breakfast, and its substantial quality
and quantity, was an idea from England; we somehow knew that in England
they began the day with this meal called breakfast, and a proper breakfast was
a big breakfast. No one I knew liked eating so much food so early in the day;
it made us feel sleepy, tired. But this breakfast business was "Made in
England like almost everything else that surrounded us, the exceptions being Jamaica Kincaid:
the .sea, the sky, and the air we breathed. "On Seeing England
for the First Time"
At the time I saw this map - seeing England for the first time - I did not say to
myself, "Ah, so that's what it looks like", because there was no longing in me
to put a shape to those three words that ran through every part of my life no
matter how small: for me to have had such a longing would have meant that I
lived in a certain atmosphere, an atmosphere in which those three words were
felt as a burden. But I did not live in such an atmosphere. When my teacher
showed us the map, she asked us to study it carefully, because no test we
would ever take would be complete without this statement: "Draw a map of
England." I did not know then that the statement "Draw a map of England
was something far worse than a declaration of war, for a flat-out declaration of
war would have put me on alert. In fact, there was no need for war - I had
long ago been conquered. I did not know then that this statement was part of a
process that would result in my erasure - not my physical erasure, but my
erasure all the same. I did not know then that this statement was meant to
make me feel awe and small whenever I heard the word "England": awe at the
power of its existence, small because I was not from it.

After that there were many times of seeing England for the first time. I saw
England in history. I knew the names of all the kings of England. I knew the.
names of their children, their wives, their disappointments, their triumphs, the
names of people who betrayed them. I knew the dates on which they were
born and the dates they died. I knew their conquests and was made to feel
, good if I figured in them; I knew their defeats.

This view - the naming of the kings, their deeds, their disappointments - was
the vivid view, the forceful view. There were other views, subtler ones,
softer, almost not there - but the& softer views were the ones that made the
most lasting impression on me, the ones that made me really feel like nothing.
"When morning touched the sky" was one phrase, for no morning touched the
sky where I lived. The morning where I lived came on abruptly, with a shock
of heat and loud noises. "Evening approaches" was another. But the evenings
where I lived did not approach; in fact, I had no evening - I had night and I
had day, and they came and went in a mechanical way: on, off, on, off. And
then there were gentle mountains and low blue skies and moors over which
people took walks for nothing but pleasure, when where I lived a walk was an
act of labour, a burden, something only death or the automobile could relieve.
And the weather there was so remarkable because the rain fell gently always,
and the wind blew in gusts that were sometimes deep, and the air was various
shades of gray, each an appealing shade for a dress to be worn when a portrait
was being painted; and when it rained at twilight, wonderful things happened:
People bumped into each other unexpectedly and that would lead to all sorts
of turns of events - a plot, the mere weather caused plots.

The reality of my life, the life I led at the time I was being shown these views
of England for the first time, for the second time, for the one hundred
millionth time, was this: The sun shone with what sometimes seemed to be a
deliberate cruelty; we must have done something to deserve that. My dresses
did not rustle in the evening air as I strolled to the theatre (I had no evening, I
had no theatre; my dresses were made of a cheap cotton, the weave of which
would give way after not too many washings). I got up in the morning, I did
my chores (fetched water from the public pipe for my mother, swept the yard),
I washed myself, I went to a woman to have my hair combed freshly every
Notz-Fictional Prose-I: day (because before we were allowed into our classroom our teachers would
Essays, Letters, inspect us, and children who had not bathed that day, or had dirt under their
Travelogues
fingernails, or whose hair had not been combed anew that day might not be
allowed to attend class). I ate that breakfast. 1 walked to school. At school we
gathered in an auditorium and sang a hymn, "All Things Bright and
Beautiful," and looking down on us as we sang were portraits of the queen of
England and her husband; they wore jewels and medals and they smiled. I was
a Brownie. At each meeting we would form a little group around a flagpole,
and after raising the Union Jack, we would say, "I promise to do my best, to
do my duty to God and the queen, to help other people every day and obey the
scouts' law."

But who were these people and why had I never seen them? I mean, really
seen them, in the place where they lived? I had never been to England.
England! I had seen England's representatives. I had seen the governor-
general at the public grounds at a ceremony celebrating the queen's birthday. I
had seen an old princess and I had seen a young princess. They had both been
extremely not beautiful, but who among us would have told them that? I had
never seen England, really seen it. I had only met a representative, seen a
picture, read books, memorized its history. I had never set foot, my own foot,
in it.

The space between the idea of something and its reality is always wide and
deep and dark. The longer they are kept apart - idea of thing, reality of thing -
the wider the width, the deeper the depth, the thicker and darker the darkness.
This space starts out empty, there is nothing in it, but it rapidly becomes filled
up with obsession or desire or hatred or love - sometimes all of these things,
sometimes some of these things. That the idea of something and its reality are
often two completely different things is something no one ever remembers;
and so when they meet and find that they are not compatible, the weaker of the
two, idea or reality, dies.

And so finally, when I was a grown-up woman, the mother of two children,
and wife of someone, a person who resides in a powerful country that takes up
more than its fair share of a continent, the owner of a house with many rooms
in it and of two automobiles, with the desire and will (which I very much act
upon) to take from the world more than I give back to it, more than I deserve,
more than I need, finally then, I saw England, the real England, not a picture,
not a painting, not through a story in a book, but England, for the first time. In
me, the space between the idea of it and its reality had become filled with
hatred, and so when at last I saw it I wanted to take it into my hands and tear it
into little pieces and then crumble it up as if it were clay, child's clay. That
was impossible, and so I could only indulge in not-favourable opinions.

If I had told an English person what I thought, that I find England ugly, that I
hate England; the weather is like a jail sentence; the English are a very ugly
people; the food in England is like a jail sentence; the hair of English people is
so straight, so dead-looking; the English have an unbearable smell so different
from the smell of people I know, real people, of course, I would have been
told that I was a person full of prejudice. Apart from the fact that it is I - that
is, the people who look like me - who would make that English person aware
of the unpleasantness of such a thing, the idea of such a thing, prejudice, that
person would have been only partly right, sort of right: I may be capable of
prejudice, but my prejudices have no weight to them, my prejudices have no Jamaica Kincaid:
force behind them, my prejudices remain opinions, my prejudices remain my "On Seeing England
personal opinion. And a great feeling of rage and disappointment came over for the First Time"
me as I looked at England, my head full of personal opinions that could not
havc public, my public, approval. The people I come from are powerless to do
' evil 9t1 u grand scale.

The moment I wished every sentence, everything I knew, that began with
England would end with "and then it all died, we don't know how, it just all
died" was when I saw the white cliffs of Dover. I had sung hymns and recited
poems that were about a longing to see the white cliffs of Dover again. At the
time I sang the hymns and recited the poems, I could really long to see them
again because I had never seen them at all, nor had anyone around me at the
time. But there we were, groups of people longing for something we had never
seen. And so there they were, the white cliffs, but they were not that pearly,
majestic thing I used to sing about, that thing that created such a feeling in
these people that when they died in the place where I lived they had
themselves buried facing a direction that would allow them to see the white
cliffs of Dover when they were resurrected, as surely they would be. The
white cliffs of Dover, when finally I saw them, were cliffs, but they were not
white; you could only call them that if the word "white" meant something
special to you; they were steep; they were so steep, the correct height from
which all my views of England, starting with the map before me in my
classroom and ending with the trip I had just taken, should jump and die and
disappear forever.

23.3.2 Glossary

squiggly: a line with twists and loops.

vein: a narrow strip of a different colour in a map.

('Squiggly veins' suggest the red lines running through
the map of England).

adoration: great love or worship.

myth: a story that originated in ancient times; something that

is imaginary and not true.

porridge: eaten at breakfast-a soft food made by boiling a cereal

in water or milk.

bolt: a quantity of cloth, wound in a roll.

cabinet: a piece of furniture with drawer or shelves for storing or

displaying things.
felt (hat): wool, hair or fur rolled flat into a thick cloth.

compelling: extremely interesting and exciting, so that one has to

, pay attention.

erasure: the action of erasing(removing), rubbing out.

awe: feeling of respect combined with fear or wonder.
A' i

' vivid: producing strong, clear pictures in the mind.

Non-Fictional Prose-I: subtler: difficult to detect or describe, not obvious.
Essays, Letters,
Travelogues anew: in a new or different way; again.
scouts' law: laws of the Scout Association which aim to develop
boys' characters through discipline, outdoor activities
and public service.

obsession: a fixed idea that fills the mind.

prejudice: dislike or distrust of a person, group or custom that is

based on fear or false inibrmation rather than on reason
or experience, and that influences one's attitude or
behaviour towards them.

23.4 THEME

A good essay is a cohesive unit and there has to be a continuous flow in which
you discern the running theme br the subject of the author's thoughts. Answer
the questions that follow to get at the theme of the essay. Do not read the
answers provided by us till you have written out your own.

1. What is the main thought that links the first two paragraphs of the
essay?

The first paragraph of the essay describes Kincaid's impressions of'

England as seen from a map in school. She found the shape of Englandl
resembling a leg of mutton, but quickly erased the comparison because:
she had been conditioned to think of England as a great land which1
could not be compared with familiar objects like a leg of mutton. She:
thought of England as a precious jewel that only the English had the:
right to wear. For the Antiguans, England was a distant land, a holy
land, like Jerusalem. In short, under their colonial masters, Antiguans
had no existence of their own except what the English imposed on1
them.

In the second paragraph, the author tells us that the Antiguans had
nothing they could call their own. As a child, Kincaid had realized that
everything from breakfast cereal to school uniforms, from shoes to
hats and cars plying on the streets of Antigua, were made in England.
Thus, the second paragraph takes off from the first and reiterates that
Antigua was nothing except what England gave it to exist as a British
colony.

2. Why does Kincaid feel anguished at her plight?

Kincaid's statement: "I had long ago been conquered is full of Jamaica Kincaid:
anguish. She feels that she had no identify of her own and that she had "On Seeing England
been erased completely. The only thing that mattered was the for the First 'rime"
compulsion to know about England and feel a sense of awe at its might
and a sense of smallness because she was not English by birth,
although her upbringing was English. She was pained at the thought
that, like her, all other Antiguans were 'nobodies'; they could never be
'something'; they were just 'nothing'.

3. How did the English colonizers impose their own culture on the
natives?

The children were taught only British history in the schools. The views
children heard about the weather or the natural scenery, were views
about the English weather and the English natural scenery. The exotic
and picturesque beauty of England was totally alien to the children's
imagination because the reality in Antigua was quite the opposite.
There was also the compulsory singing of English hymns and paying
obeisance to the English flag, with duty to the British Queen and the
British people whom the children had never seen. This reveals how far
the colonized Antiguans were forced to live an English life alien to
their native culture. The literature they read did 'not relate to
Caribbean islands.

4. What opinion does Kincaid form of England when she first visits it?
Why can she not express her opinion?

Kincaid forms a very poor opinion of England. There is nothing in it

that appeals to her. She dislikes England, its food, its weather and its
people. Even the white cliffs of Dover, that she had read about at
school, were a disappointment when she saw them. Kincaid knows that
all her views about England, starting with the map and ending with her
trip, will remain within her because colonized people were powerless
to exert or express any opinion on the mighty English. She is sure that
her opinions, if expressed, will be contemptuously dismissed as
irrational prejudices by the English.

Check Your Progress-I

Briefly answer the following questions in your own words before you turn to
the answers at the end of the unit:
a. How was Kincaid familiar with the greatness of England, as a child?
b. Relate the essay to the phrase "Made in England.

c. How does the writer experience the space between the idea of England
and the real England?
Non-Fictional Prose-I:
Essays, Letters,
23.5 PROSE STYLE
Travelogues

Style is the writer's manner of presenting hislher theme, and involves a skilful
use of language and literary devices. Jamaica Kincaid's major theme in all her
writings, including the present essay, is to show how the colonized people find
themselves at a disadvantage in becoming something in life because they are
forced to live an English life alien to their native culture. In expressing her
personal indignation against the English who had colonized her native home,
Antigua, Kincaid is at times sarcastic in her expression and at others, ironical.
However, there is a rare degree of pathos that underlies both her sarcasm and
her irony. Sarcasm refers to remarks that imply the opposite of what they
appear to mean and are intended to mock. In other words, sarcasm is a bitter
sneer or a satirical remark in scorn or contempt. For instance, when the author '

says that everything in Antigua had the 'Made in England' label on it, she
sarcastically points out that the only exceptions were "the sea, the sky, and the
air we breathed that were not made in England.

Irony is another 'literary device used by Kincaid to present her thoughts. Irony
is also the expression of one's meaning by saying the opposite of what one is
thinkiny, and is often used to be amusing. One example of an ironical
expressio._ ;- the essay is when the author compares her situation with that of
the English people. She says: "My dresses did not rustle in the evening air as I
strolled to the theatre.. .". The remark is ironical because she neither had fine
dresses, nor took an evening stroll, nor went to any theatre. In her own words:
"I had no evening, I had no theatre; my dresses were made of a cheap cotton,
the weave of which would give way after not too many washings."

Pathos in literature implies a condition that excites a feeling of pity or sadness.

In paragraph three, the author sums up the compulsion faced by the Antiguans
to know all about England, in the statement: "Draw a map of England. Her
remark excites pity at the Antiguan situation under the English domination: 'I
did not know then that this statement was part of a process that would result in
my erasure - not my physical erasure, but my erasure all the same. I did not
know then that this statement was meant to make me feel awe and small
whenever I heard the word "England: awe at the power of its existence, small
because I was not from it1.

Check Your Progress-I1

a. Pick up an example of sarcasm from the essay that has not been
mentioned in the discussion above.

b. Which paragraphs in the essay show a striking contrast between the:

English situation and the Antiguan reality?

c. Explain the pathos contained in the following statement occurring in

paragraph two: 'And this hat - a brown felt hat - became so central to
his character that it was the first thing he put on in the morning as hc
stepped out of bed and the last thing he took off before he stepped badL
into bed at night."
Jamaica Kincaid:
23.6 LET US SUM UP "On Seeing EngIand
for the First T i e " .
In this unit you have:

e examined Jamaica Kincaid's essay "On Seeing England for the First
Time" as a personal essay that reveals her anger against the English in
a very candid manner;
gathered that the essay does not present an account of travel but is an
attempt to give expression to the author's thoughts as they occur to
her; and
e noticed that the essay is heavily laced with sarcasm and irony, with a
thread of pathos running throughout.

23.7 SUGGESTED READING

Jamaica Kincaid: The Autobiography of My Mother

David P. Lichtenstein: A Brief Biography of Jamaica Kincaid.

23.8 ANSWERS TO EXERCISES

Check Your Progress-I

a. As a child, Kincaid was already familiar with the greatness of England

as everything she and her family used came from England, right from
the breakfast cereal they ate each morning, to the clothes and shoes
they wore. The child also knew of England's greatness from what she
read of its history at school, or from what she had read about it in a
book or seen in a picture.

b. The essay is expressive of the indignation felt by the colonized people

against their colonizers. Antigua, being a British colony, was in awe of
its colonizers. As a child, Kincaid realized that her upbringing was
totally English, with nothing of the native culture in it. All the things
used by her and her family, like their breakfast and the clothes and
shoes they wore, had "Made in England" written on them. This made
her feel as if England had taken over her life and erased her very
identify. It made her feel very small and insignificant, a 'nobody' who
could never be 'something' in life.

c. The writer experiences the space between the idea of England and the
real England when she first takes a trip to that country. This space had
previously been filled with hatred, so that when she first sets foot in
England, she feels like tearing everything into pieces. She finds
everything about it and its people ugly. Even the chalk-white cliffs of
Dover do not appear white to her at all and she wonders why the
English in Antigua had considered them so majestic and romantic.
Non-Fictionul Prose-l: Check Your Progress-11
Essays, Lett~rs,
Travelogues ,
a. The author, as a schoolgirl, finds the map of England resembling a leg
of mutton but remarks sarcastically that anything so great like England
should not be compared to an ordinary object like a leg of mutton.

b. Paragraphs %fiveand six.

c. The author's father had perhaps seen and admired a picture of an

Englishman wearing a felt hat in England. Felt was right for a cold
climate but not the right material for a hat that had to be used in the hot
Antiguan climate. Kincaid's remark about her father's hat is more
pathetic than sarcastic. It arouses a sense of pity in us for her father
who wore "the wrong hat for a hot climate most of his long life" just
because hfj admired the English way of life. The extent to which the
colonizers had taken hold of the native mind arouses our pity for the
native situation.