Biology Of A Dress Analysis

The cultural ties to empire are not so easy to efface as the political ones. In the past half century, this is perhaps one of the most important lessons the world has learned from the movement towards the independence of the part of European colonies. Some countries become England colonies including Asia, India, Africa, and some parts of North America. Although these countries are no longer dependent on the British colonies, the residual effect of colonial domination is still remain nowadays. Growing up in the small island in Antigua, which was once the colony of the British Empire, Kincaid has written many short stories and autobiographical essays to express her anger and hatred toward England. Biography of a Dress is a short story …show more content…
Both of the works depict her life in different events, in fact, they all express the same feeling of the author about how everyone in Antigua lives under the shadow of the colonial rules. In Biology of a Dress, comparing the relationship of the mother and daughter to the relationship of Europe and Antigua is the relationship between powerful and powerless. In another words, the mother is powerful and the girl is powerless. In this story, the mother wants to have her photographed in this dress for her second birthday. For her mother, this is a special event because she has an opportunity to do all the customs which everyone does to celebrate a child’s birthday perhaps. “And I cried out … being shaped into a dress”. First, she makes her a yellow dress and “a shade of yellow almost identical to the yellow poplin”. Also, she gets her ear piercing and a pair of a small hoops which is made from British Guiana is placed on her ears. “My second birthday was not… had my ears pierced”. For Kincaid, this is a painful experience because her mother was trying to reconstruct the image of her as a white child. “My skin was not the color of cream … but no one can answer me, really answer me”. In the given photo of