Comparing Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid to Wide Sargasso Sea and Song of Solomon

During our class discussions about Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea, I kept drawing parallels to the character Lucy Josephine Potter from Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid (we read it during sophomore english with Dr. E). Lucy is from the West Indies but left to give herself a better life so she lives in North America as a domestic servant to an affluent white family. The novel follows the life of Lucy as she matures and learns/recognizes about her place in the world. Throughout the novel, Lucy struggles with her identity, ranging from her cultural background to her sexuality.

Throughout Wide Sargasso Sea, I kept seeing similarities to Lucy because I saw some parallels between Antoinette and Lucy. First, the most obvious comparison was how both characters are from the West Indies but end up living in a "foreign" land, like England in Wide Sargasso Sea or the United States in Lucy. While both characters feel out of place, Antoinette endures more hardship since she is forcibly removed from her homeland by her husband and locked up whereas Lucy leaves the West Indies on her own will to be different and is treated with a fair amount of care from the white family she works for. Another similarity and difference I observed was how both Antoinette and Lucy had a strained relationship with their mothers. Although both Lucy and Antoinette were separated from their family, Lucy is more "comfortable" with this distance because she occasionally does receive letters from her mom while Antoinette, on the other hand, is estranged from her family (or at least the family members that cared about her well-being) and has no means of reconciling with her mother since she died. I also drew a connection between Antoinette and Lucy when Antoinette is kept hostage in the attic by her husband because in Lucy, a prison is used a metaphor to describe her state of mind when she arrives to the United States from the West Indies. Even though Lucy isn't physically held captive, she often feels confined because she isn't able to freely live and has to live with certain limitations in her life, most of which are seen in her relationships. While Antoinette is obviously held hostage, she is also emotionally and mentally confined, which is seen through her recurring dreams about the fire.

While Song of Solomon seems very different from Lucy, I saw a similarity between these two books because both Milkman and Lucy go on a "quest" to free themselves from their parent's footsteps and consequently find out more information about their identity. Lucy leaves the West Indies for the United States and carves her own future because she wants to turn out differently than how her mother's life turned out. While in the U.S., Lucy discovers things about herself that she wouldn't have realized if she still lived in the West Indies. For example, she was able to explore her sexuality in the U.S. in ways that she wouldn't have been able to back home. Similarly, throughout the novel, Milkman detests himself for how alike he and his father are and longs to step out from his father's shadow. As a result, Milkman leaves everyone behind and goes on an adventure to find gold, which really turns into a quest to uncover the unknowns about his family. Through this exploration, Milkman also learns about his true feelings towards others, such as Pilate, Hagar, and his parents.

While all three novels have very different plots, they have similar underlying themes and ideas because they were written during different times in the 20th century.