Girl By Jamaica Kincaid Analysis

Kincaid’s choice to separate pieces of advice by semicolons instead of full-stop periods lends the piece a sense of urgency, almost as if the mother is trying to impart all of her knowledge to her daughter as quickly as possible. However, this often makes the mother’s words come across tersely, and the their relationship seems strained at best. The daughter is allowed very little input overall; one of her sentences comes across defensively, as she denies her mother’s accusations that she is singing provocative music in Sunday school, and the other is posed as an innocent question which receives an aggressive answer. The mother’s main concern seems to be that her daughter is turning into a “slut”, and because of this apparent fear, she can be argumentative and tense towards her daughter. However, near the end of the piece, some of the advice seems to take a softer turn. The mother gives her daughter advice about love, and says, “don’t feel too bad about giving up” (1), which is much gentler than many previous sentiments. She even gives advice about “how to spit up in the air if you feel like it” (1) and how to move away; this reads much more like play than work, and almost gives a sense of playfulness between the mother and daughter, practicing a useless but entertaining trick. However, by the end, the mood turns again, as the girl’s innocent question provokes an angry answer: “you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?” (1). While there may have been some progress in the mother-daughter relationship, it is ultimately returned to the same frustrated and almost resentful

Next, evidence that shows a daughter is briefly heard is the other character interjects and asks a question. The character interjects when the mother asks if she sang Benna in Sunday school, the girl interjects and said she never did that. A daughter would want to interject with her mother to tell her she did not sing an un-lady like song in. Also, the character asks what she should do if the baker will not let her squeeze the bread to see if it is fresh. The mother replies by asking, “you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker wont let near the bread?” This shows a mother is talking to her daughter because the speaker sounds disappointed after her daughter she is still going to have a bad reputation after all the mother has done for her. In conclusion, the speaker in the text “Girl” is a mother and the person briefly heard is the daughter. This is because the speaker is telling the other person tips to make chores easier and advice for her life, which is something mothers do for their daughters. The other character

In the short story “Girl”, by Jamaica Kincaid is told from the perspective of two different people. There is a bonding relationship that is happening between the two people in this short story. The mother seems to be the main character in this essay uses a very strict tone to her daughter. The daughter is being told about how to do things in her life the correct way. The daughter barely speaks during this essay, she is doing more analyzing than arguing with her mother. When the mother gives the daughter advise she was trying to give her words of wisdom. But, at the same time, some of the ideas the mother gave to her child was offensive like “slut”. The mother has different perspectives throughout this essay with a lot of different

     In 'Girl'; Kincaid lists a series of orders from a mother to a daughter in such a way that the characters' lives are illuminated and transformed by the mundane household details. The 'Girl'; is more of a gender type of a story, but there is also a lesson that needs to be realized by the girl. In this story the mother of this girl is her teacher, she tells her daughter of how the world is around her, just like Miss Moore in 'The Lesson.'; The mother in this story tries to make her daughter realize that he needs to be viewed as a woman within society. Who or what the

The mother also teaches her daughter to cook, clean, and wash which traditionally is up to the women in a household to do. Kincaid makes the reader think and figure out for him, or herself, what point of life the child is in and what gender they are in order to draw them into the story.

Have you ever wished that someone had given you a guide on how live the right way? Jamaica Kincaid does just that in her short story, Girl. The narrative is presented as a set of life instructions to a girl by her mother to live properly in Antigua in the 1980’s. While the setting of the story is not expressly stated by the author in the narrative, the reader is able to understand the culture for which Girl was written.

The narration of the mother lecturing her daughter with commanding diction leads to the theme of women conforming to domesticity and if they don’t conform then they will lead a life of promiscuity that will affect the way people perceive them. Women in the past believed that a woman’s role was that of a domesticated housewife. The narration of the third point of view in this story and the commanding diction of it places an importance in the reinforcement of this idea, that if a woman doesn’t follow social norms, she will eventually turn to a “slut” one that her family will be ashamed of. She must set the table for lunch and for breakfast that is “how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know [her] very well, and that it the way they won’t recognize immediately the slut that [the mother has] warned her against becoming.”(Kincaid 485) through her commanding diction, the mother is telling her daughter how to set a table, how to cook, she

Kincaid uses a great deal of symbolism to reflect on female sexuality. From the first line to the last there is Symbolism. The first line says, “Wash the white clothes on Monday”. The mother, in that first sentence, is saying that her daughter should keep her body pure and clean. Another symbol many recognize in this story is when the mother accuses the girl of singing benna at Sunday School. The girl replies by stating, “but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school.” Benna is an Antiguan folksong sang to spread rumors about scandalous events. Benna is symbolic because the mother is accusing her daughter of getting mixed up in ‘scandalous events”. While symbolism

In the short story, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, you hear about the many words of wisdom, or advice that a mother is attempting to pass on to her daughter. The condescending tone of the story is portrayed by the use of semi colons, showing a steady stream of advice and preaching of the mother onto the daughter. The story follows an almost poetic or lyrical style of writing that flows from basic advice like how to sweep a corner to advice like how to handle a man bullying you or how to have an abortion. Although a lot of the advice given to the daughter may be useful in her life and in the culture they live in, it is delivered in a way that seems very callous, and is said with a stern tone, much like a dictator. The daughter in the story tries to speak up only twice throughout the entire thig, only to be completely unheard as the mother continues her chant. The only time the mother’s advice is repeating is when she refers to her daughter as a slut, or her inevitable “becoming of a slut”, which occurs four times throughout the work. The story is written with no real chronological timeline and does not have the traditional beginning, middle, and ending.

In “Girl”, by Jamaica Kincaid, the mother is warning her daughter about what to expect, and how to act, in society. The story represents a time when the daughter knew that her mother loved her enough to spend the time to give her the advice, but is also emotionally distant. I believe this to be representative of Kincaid’s life, and how after her brother’s were born she felt that her mother did not have enough time for her.

Elaine Potter Richardson, more famously known as Jamaica Kincaid, is recognized for her writings that suggest depictions of relationships between families, mainly between a mother and daughter, and her birth place, Antigua, an island located in the West Indies. She is also familiarized with Afrocentrism and feminist point of views. Kincaid’s work is filled heavily with visual imagery that produces a mental picture in readers that helps them connect stronger to the reading. An example of this really shines through in her short story piece, “Girl.” This short story describes the life of a lower class woman living in the West Indies, and also incorporates thick detailing between the relationship between her and her mother. Jamaica Kincaid structures the story as if her mother is speaking to her. She writes broad, but straight to the point, allowing readers to imagine to picture her experience. Kincaid uses visual imagery and repetition consistently throughout “Girl” to reveal the theme and tone of the story; conflictual affair between a mother and daughter.

From the beginning, the house and clothing functions as the daughter has to have cleanliness because people are always watching and will judge her reputation and social class. Kincaid states, “this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming” (17). In this line, the mother gives a clear understanding of why the clothes must be properly taken care of because, no matter what, people seem to be watching the appearance of clothes worn, looked and they will treat someone the way they think that someone should be treated if they are dressed indecent. The mother speaks to her daughter with a commanding tone and never says “please” when giving

352). In today’s society there are no rules that prevent a person from doing all their laundry in the same day. A majority of people have probably learned from their parents or from experience that it doesn’t work so well if you wash whites and darks together; otherwise stating there are no instructions that come along with the task of laundry. In Kincaid’s (2011) story “Girl” the reader gathers the idea from the tone of the text, as it is the women’s role to do the laundry; whereas, in today’s society it is not always the woman completing the task of laundry. In some families, more often than less the women and men share the responsibility of doing laundry. In viewing the story “Girl” from a feminist perspective, another occurrence of gender roles would be the narrator’s statement “soak salt water fish overnight before you cook it” (Kincaid, 2011, p. 352). In the society that the story takes place, it is the woman’s responsibility to cook, compared to the twentieth century family, the meals may be prepared by every member of the family. Prior to the feminist laws women were treated with little to no respect for the things that they were expected to accomplish on a daily basis. In the era the story is written, women were often wives, housekeepers, cooks, and teachers. “This is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t have a crease,” and “this is how you sweep a

We live in a society where the similarities between female and males are seen at birth. It begins innocently with the toddlers; girls get pink while boys get blue. The gap between boys and girls develops with time and becomes increasingly apparent. There are still gender stereotypes today, but it is not as bad as it was in the past. Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl” perfectly portrays gender stereotypes. It represents gender concepts as cultural constructs in the period it was written. These conceptions are comparable to current stereotypes about gender. The book gives us a list of commands from a mother to a daughter. Men in the society are dominant to the women, and the set of rules is a product of patriarchy whereby the mother and daughter appear as subordinates to the men in their lives. The article makes one aware of the prevailing masculine hierarchy that exists in a family, and how it creates firm gender roles for females in the society.

There are several responsibilities a girl should learn about before going off on her own and it is usually the mother’s job to teach their daughter these life lessons. In the prose poem “Girl,” by Jamaica Kincaid, a mother writes out a “guide” her daughter must follow in order to succeed in her adult years.