Matriarchal Influences Over Identity
In many colonial and post-colonial societies, the influence of maternal figures over identity formation is a topic of some significance. These influences are explicated in the four novels to be discussed in this report. These novels are George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin, Zee Edgell's Beka Lamb, Earl Lovelace's Salt, and Caryl Phillips' Crossing the River. Though these novels are substantially different in many ways, they share a common concern with determining how identity among oppressed people is formed and shaped not only by external or societal forces but by familial variables as well.
Lamming (15) creates in the mother of his narrator a woman who "don't like to see you crya. She talk and talk but she seldom hit you." She is a woman determined that her son will have a decent life but she is only one of the women who influenced the young boy. The women of the village are women whose "consciousness had never been quickened by the fact of life (Lamming, 18)." Unlike men who often leave, these women of the villages of Barbados are women who remain with their children and grandchildren and care for them. They are the models that help young children learn the difference between right and wrong.
The character of Ma is a woman who believes that "the works o' the Lord is really wondrous (Lamming, 79)." While Ma does not understand politics, she understands the difference between right and wrong and lives a life in which she refuses to "fly in God's face 'cause he knows best (Lamming, 83)." Old women like this help young people to understand the past and how the past influences the present. They provide much of the stability that keeps families of poor people together while men often abandon their families in order to secure a better life for themselves. Lamming's world view clearly depicts women as key social forces in their families and in the village commu...