English Literature

In the novel Autobiography of my mother by Jamaica Kincaid, Xuela is seen to embrace her sexuality as her weapon of seduction to achieve power, self-control and sexual pleasure. In the novel, sex is used as tool for gaining pleasure and psychological satisfaction more than even life of a fetus that she carried as a surrogate mother to a white family. Consequently, the extent of colonialism and racism power over a slave are satirical illustrated in Xuelas power over her body.                                                   Her female sexual protagonist is first seen when she seduces Monsieur LaBatte a married man, though with permission from his barren wife who longs to have a child and hopes that the relationship would produce a child. Xuela confessed of the calm and pacifying pleasure she felt while having sex with the married man, through all parts of my body that ached I relived the deep pleasure I had just experienced (Kincaid 72). Moreover, after losing her virginity she is able to demonstrate an extraordinary state of calmness and self-control after Monsieur LaBatte aggressive tribulation when she concluded that, I had only lost consciousness and I picked up where I had left off in my ache of pleasure (Kincaid 72). Evidently, from the statement Xuela who was a mere teenager of fifteen years outstandingly explored her body and sexuality to achieve pleasure for her own sake. The power of the young girl can be felt in the expression of her sexual feeling and her tactics to overpower a white man who was then supposed to be a lord over a black girl thus illustrating that she was indeed in touch with herself, her sexuality and had the power over her feelings and overcomes the sexual urge after being satisfied by literally picking up her conscious self. This incident clearly illustrates how she uses sex as source of pleasure and gratification while at the same time displaying the desperate White mans need for a child.                                                 Incidentally, Xuela aborted the couples child for three main reasons. Firstly, she was supposed to derive sexual pleasure from her sexual encounters and not a child. Furthermore a child and motherhood meant that her power over sex could be imprisoned in motherly-care thus she could end up losing that egocentric sexual controlling power she perceived to have in seducing men. Secondly, she insists that she had power over her body and was therefore beyond the white dominance and colonialism that was quite rampant. Her power is further displayed and enhanced in her when she realizes that the white couple is in deep agony and dire need of a child. Consequently she capitalizes on the desperate family for us to see her power over sexuality, I had carried my own life in my own hands (Kincaid 83). The self proclaimed love for her body is in her personality as a source of comfort. Thirdly, Xuela who had a feminist approach to life dictates that her refusal to bear motherhood was realistic and time bound within her sphere of power and life since she never wanted her child to suffer in the hands of a step mother as she recalled how a step mother nearly poisoned her so she attributes abortion as a right to be excised over her body, women can, and should, have exclusive right over their own body, whether it is deriving pleasure from sex or refusing the biological faculty of womanhood. Lastly, Xuela never wanted to have a child out of a racial and oppressive fatherhood.                Nevertheless, Xuelas notion about life misguides her into seeking more sexual gratification experiences out of loneliness and power to see if she was to be love. This is so because she subscribed to the idea that all people who loved and she could love had died, I felt I did not want to belong to anyone, that since the one person I would have consented to own me had never lived to do so, I did not want anyone to belong to me (Kincaid 112). That is the reason why she aborted, and went into a loveless marriage and quickly dislodged herself since in that closed life she could not feel her power over her sexuality. Reflectively Xuela seems to define the power over sexuality as the ability to experience and have sex orgasms with different men in order to feel that she is in control. Though a conclusion can be made about her psychological materialistic self her father is described by her as being too vain and unrealistic attendant to the empire business since he was a policeman whom she vehemently hated, My fathers skin was the color of corruption copper, gold, ore (Kincaid 181). Perceptively, Xuela and pursuits are therefore closely relating to the socio-psychological environment of her life. She had to transcend colonialism and racism the way she conceived it and thus she achieves that by hurting many lives who wanted to sexual take advantage of her during her life.                                                                                                                         Moreover, the social stigma associated with Xuelas failure to conform to motherhood, limited temptress and sexual subjugation while gripping to authenticate her sexual power can be said to be a chief characteristic of her paternal background that she discredits while generally accepting the recognition of her true self identity as an African with a different touch of understanding
    This account of my life has been an account of my mothers life as much as it has been an     account of mine, and even so, again it is an account of the life of the children I did not     have, as it is their account of me. In me is the voice I never heard, the face I never saw,     the being I came from. In me are the voices that should have come out of me, the faces I     never allowed to form, the eyes I never allowed to see me. This account is an account of     the person who was never allowed to be and an account of the person I did not allow     myself to become. (Kaidman 228)
The end of the novel elucidated the transcending egocentric belief that Xuela hold about her life in regard to understanding her true character and circumstances that forced her to live like that though she reflectively disapproves of the promiscuous actions and is in dire need of love that she contrary beliefs died at her birth with her mother. Thus she generally accepts to be worthless as, Since I do not matter, I do not long to matter, but I matter anyway. Therefore her sexual pursuits seem to be the most advanced channel of power to assert her personality. The social society discredited her all the time to the extent of being branded evil and other unnamable names, my memory, ability to retain the tiniest detail...regarded as unusual that my teacher said I was evil...pointing to the fact that my mother was of the Carib people (Kaidman 16). With the death of her mother and the uncaring father, the  inception of her life was horrid and I came to feel that for my whole life I had been standing on a precipice, that my loss had made me vulnerable, hard, and helpless (Kaidman 4) as a result Xuelas perspective about morality and marriage is distorted by the society.                                Conclusively, Xuela has been depicted by Kaidman as a professional power hunter who gains all her aspirations at heart while disposing the empirical colonialism and paternal racism. Consequently in the aftermath of racism and colonialism Xuela does not fail but in tranquility takes her stand on her values as not to bring forth another soul to undergo the same tribulations as her own life-thus affirming her total control of her sexuality as a source of power and satisfaction in her lonely and discriminated life.