Rev. Crick Crack, Monkey by Merle Hodge

Hodge's novel not only illustrates the class conflict Tee experiences when pulled between the rural Tantie and the upper middle-class Aunt Beatrice as Roy Narinesingh suggests in the introduction to the text; Tee also endures the domination of two competing women in a traditionally matriarchal culture. The males of the text are mostly submissive figures . . . Tantie's son Mikey, unemployed and living at home, spends most of his time hiding the his exploits and cowering beneath Tantie's rants. Both Tee and Toddan find themselves living with Tantie when their mother dies in childbirth and the father suddenly becomes "absent." Toddan, too, is yet another submissive figure, trailing behind Tee and learning from her experiences.

The tale was evidently an influence on Jamaica Kincaid (Kincaid makes reference to the text in an interview with in an interview with Moira Ferguson in Kenyon Review in 1994, describing the text as a novel of postcolonial abuse). For instance the child in "Girl" finds herself torn between the mother's conflicting values--her simultaneous praise of English Christian values and obeah practices--as Tee is torn by what Narinesingh calls "Tantie's naturalness" and the lure of "creole middle-class" materliaism offered by Aunt Beatrice. Under the tutelage of Tantie and "Ma," Tee revels in nature, comparing her waking grandmother to a "mountain shaking off mist in one mighty shudder and the mist falling away in little drops of cloud" (18), as well as the Trinidadian myths of her upbringing--jumbies, djablesses, and Brar Anancy and Leopard. The body, too, is celebrated for its natural makeup. During the summer stays at Ma's house, the children torture each other with flatulence. While crammed in a single bed, Tee, Toddan, and Ma's younger children feel no shame in their bodily "abjection": " . . . someone [would choose] this situation of inescapable intimacy to emit an anonymous but very self-assertive poops. It was impossible to detect the owner, and chaos ensued while every man accused his immediate neighbour. In the end we had to count the culprit out by means of Ink-Pink-Mamma-Stink, and the man thus denounced was emitted bodily amidst a new burst of commotion." Again, this ignorance of colonial mandates of propriety is echoed in Kincaid and Mootoo, whose protagonists in The Autobiography of My Mother and Cereus Blooms at Night embrace the abject function of the body as a rejection of colonial values.

Conversely, Tee immediately associates Aunt Beatrice with sweets, cars, and "dull perfume that issued out from her clothes" (12). But with the malevolent materialism and adherence to colonial values forced upon Tee by Aunt Beatrice comes the opportunity for education; however, schooling, too, becomes a classification of status. From the racist rantings of Mr. Hinds to those of Mrs. Harper, Tee's identity, one she embraced as a child in Tantie's care, begins to distintegrate in a vat of self-loathing. The humor dies quickly in the book, leaving us to Tee's constant desire for invisibility.

What struck me most about this book was its obvious influence on Kincaid. Kincaid mentions Hodge's influence on her writing in at least two interviews, but the basis of Hodge works seems to have propelled Kincaid in plot. The rejection and refusal of what Tantie represents, Tee's motherland, appears again in Lucy's refusal to write or speak to her mother. The bond becomes one of ambivalence and tragic loss. Tee's schooling mimics Annie John's, where the children are forced to learn about haystacks and are beaten when they spell "sleet" incorrectly (something as foreign to them as Kincaid's image of Columbus. Like Lucy's and Annie John's, Tee's true motherland, Trinidad, is replaced with colonial imitations and eventually, the land of the actual colonizer itself. Like Lucy, she is forced to learn poems and psalms and to sing of "black sin" being washed away by the "light" (33). This section appears to be more indicative of Janie's struggle in Their Eyes Were Watching God, where she of lighter skin is elevated--the opposite of Tee's genetic lot. As in The Autobiography of My Mother, childrend are placed beneath mango trees to cry in solitude until they are self-composed (35). Besson's story of the estate haunted by the murdered djablesse appears again, too (62).

What is heartbreaking is the end of the novel, where Tee fantasizes about returning to her "lost origins" : "I didn't need any baggage because I had clothes up there. And Tantie would soon make me some more.. . . Sooner or later I would be at the front gate. And it was always there that my plan broke down" (119). But in her return she can only see a cold, silent Tantie, arms foled, and an inability to communicate with "Ma." Returns are not possible, and Tee realizes this, as does Lucy. But oddly enough, Tee has been forced to go to England with her father, suddenly engendering the respect of the materialist devotees of the colonialist regime.

Tee's transition, like Nrinesingh reflects, is still transitory. She has progressed from a rebellious, self-aware child, who rebels against her instructors, abusive figures who can only project their experienced violence onto others (i.e., Alfred Richardson in TAoMM). Tee is a keen observer; she understands her abusers' shortcomings. But as she verges on womanhood, a time when childhood resiliency is waning and nurturing is vital, Tee finds herself repulsing Auntie Beatrice (after primally rebelling against Beatrice when Tee associates herself with the trapped crab on the beach), Carol, the "lighter" daughter, and even Jessica, who now finds herself alleviated from the bottom of the pecking order. For all of the love Tantie appears to show (though this can also be translated to a need for domination, for possession--which is possibly why her "children" disperse so quickly--her confession of refusing to inform Tee of Ma's illness is evidence of this greed, this manipulation), for Beatrice there is none; status is most vital. Tee is rejected due to her mother's seeming bastardization of Doularie (was Tee's father white? we know that her mother was partially white); she is rejected because of the darkness of her skin; she is rejected because of her animalistic rejection of Beatrice's suffocating domination. Now, like Annie John, on her way to England, Tee will escape the tug-of-war between two extremist factions, and possibly gain a chance for more material success. But again, if she attends England's schools, as we assume she will, she will once again be writing in the language of the conqueror and learning through his methodology.