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Jamaica Kincaid

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“Girl” Analysis Albert Camus once said, “There is only one class of men, the privileged class”. This quote brings upon the idea of social class and inequality by bringing up the point that only the privileged enjoy benefits, while the lower class is left to fend for himself. This idea of social class and inequality is prevalent in prose poem “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid where a mother gives commands to her daughter in order for her to become a proper woman that will allow her to climb in social standing. Through the mother, Jessica Kincaid depicts the struggles of being a part of the bottom of the hierarchical ladder through her sex and race, struggling to climb up. Although women’s social class definitely on the rise, their position in society …show more content…

This explains the mother’s harsh words to her daughter, making sure she has the best chance to gain social standing from her unfortunate position. When the mother responds to the daughter, “but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; 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?” (Kincaid 201). The mother says that after everything she has done in order to ensure her daughter’s rise in social class, so she better not end up finding a way to lower her already low position in the hierarchical ladder to the point where the baker will not even let her get close to the bread. This would mean that the baker would also view the daughter as some type of outcast contrary to her social class. The aspects of race and gender play a large part into determining the views of others as well as social …show more content…

In this poem, the mother tells her daughter what she needs to know in order to please the men with higher social class through a repetition of a “do this, do that” list of commands. The mother goes through the duties of a woman in order to keep men comfortable such as cooking, cleaning, and a personality that pleases men. However, the mother repeats one certain line to the daughter multiple times, “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” (Kincaid 200). This one line brings a lot of significance with the repetition of “to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming” through the different definitions of “slut” the mother uses each time she repeats this. She ties the word “slut” to someone who does not walk properly, someone who does not take care of clothes, someone who does not act properly in the presence of men, and someone who the baker does not let near the bread. By culminating all these different definitions of the word “slut” that the mother goes on about, it means someone who does not do what society perceives as proper and key to do, therefore spurned by society. Hence the mother tries to prevent her daughter from becoming someone who does not do the

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