Marxist and Gramsci: Kincaid and Dickens

Antonio Gramsci, essentially a Marxist, elaborated on the ideology with his concept of hegemony. By hegemony he meant “political and ideological consensus”, namely a group dominates not merely economically, but also with intellectual ideology; the imposition of cultural values and morals on the majority of society. This concept explains why capitalism survived despite significant odds. Economic domination by itself did not determine the fate of capitalism. Instead, it endured because the dominant party perpetuated their capitalistic ideology.
For this reason, Gramsci’s theory recognizes the important role of “super structural institutions”. Public institutions, government, the legal system and schools play a role in spreading the ideology of the dominating party.Gramsci distinguishes between institutions whose agenda is more obviously coercive and those with more veiled agendas. This is an important background to understanding the Marxists readings. On studying, the dialogue of Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” and Charles Dicken’s collection of works Marxists ideologies can be exposed. This proves Gramsci’s idea of how hegemony is spread and maintained.
Kincaid’s “Girl” is a seemingly innocent dialectic between mother and daughter. However, a Marxist reading reveals its injunctions of “moral precepts”. Anonymity is maintained because the dialogue is not a personal encounter but a lesson for the larger society; “the resolution of problems… within the narrative through the persistent continuation of the mother’s diatribe represents the self-perpetuation of the ideology that keeps the working class in its place.” (2) The Marxists reader of Kincaid is pointing out how this narrative is perpetuating the dominant class hegemony.
Dickens’s “Great Expectations”, as the title implies, features characters that are acutely aware of their indigenous societal class expectations. Furthermore, Dickens seemed to recognize the significance of literature in affecting society. “The value of literature springs from the fact that it continues and changes the organization of social energy; we perceive value through the awakening of the same kind of energy in ourselves.” Dickens’s work was enormously popular and Gramsci would have labeled it a non coercive tool of hegemony.