Sexuality In Marbles

Clearly one of the main themes evident in this short story, the battle with her identity and gender is quickly made apparent. The narrator is a young girl who appreciates, respects and holds her father’s authority in high regard, while she looks down on

This story, with its lack of rhyme structure and rhythm, is similar to a prose poem. The sharp and repetitive sentence structure makes the list of instructions seem as if they are being given in one endless dialogue. The seemingly infinite commands create a suffocating sense of obligation for the daughter. By including questions in the mother’s list of commands, the author makes it seem like the mother is speaking in a stream of consciousness and is rattling off orders and advice to her daughter. “Soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach” (Kincaid). Simultaneously, it smothers the exchange between the daughter and mother, restricting the idea of a real, two-way conversation. Throughout the story, the daughter rarely speaks, only to protest against her mother’s claims, including the belief that the daughter will become a “slut” when she is older. Her mother states, “prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming” (Kincaid) twice within the story, emphasizing the mother’s accusatory words that simultaneously assume the daughter is already on track to becoming a “slut.” Subsequently, the daughter argues how she doesn’t “sing benna on Sundays at all” (Kincaid) when harshly criticized by her mother. The daughter’s haste and sharp responses to her mother’s brusque accusations suggest that the daughter has already

In Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl,” the narration of a mother lecturing her daughter with sharp, commanding diction and unusual syntax, both affect the evolution of a scornful tone, that her daughter’s behavior will eventually lead her to a life of promiscuity that will affect the way people perceive her and respect her within her social circle. As well as the fact that it emphasizes expectations for young women to conform to a certain feminine ideal of domesticity as a social norm during this time and the danger of female sexuality.

The mother believes that her daughter has already started down the path of living a life filled with disrespect and promiscuity because of the way she walks, talks, and sings benno during Sunday school. She gives her daughter knowledge on how to be a respectable woman in order to guide her, but she seems to think that none of her wisdom will make any difference and that the girl is destined to live the life of a slut. One quote from the mother that illustrates this idea is when she says “on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming” (10). In this quote, the mother tells her daughter to walk appropriately in public on Sundays because she thinks that people in the community are going to judge her for the way she walks. The mother thinks that a woman’s sexuality must be carefully guarded, and even concealed in order to maintain a good reputation with the community because she believes that reputation determines woman’s quality of life in society. If a woman were to have a bad reputation in her community, then

Families are different today than they were fifty years ago. Not just regarding the social changes with gay couples, divorced couples, and single parents, but other changes around us have caused the family to evolve. The invention of the television, the internet, and even freezers and microwaves have changed how the family functions. Compounding changes in the world around us, the treatment of women as equals has also adjusted the dynamic in households. In the novel Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, the author pins the changing of our family culture, with regards specifically to mealtime, on the women’s liberation movement from the sixties. (126) Family mealtime has changed over the years, but there are multiple reasons for its perceived demise. The women’s liberation movement gave women the chance to leave the kitchen and enter the workforce, but changes to the family meal began before women started taking up careers alongside men. Food processing, personal electronics, and the way our society raises children, have all changed how we eat together.

“The Magic of a Family Meal” by Nancy Gibbs is an enlightening article that convinces the audience that enjoying the company of family during meal time benefits all members emotionally, spiritually, and health wise. Gibbs main point states, “This [the family meal] is where the tribe comes to transmit wisdom, embed expectations, confess, conspire, forgive, repair” (209). Families gathering for meals have the unique opportunity to become closer and favorably impact one another. This thesis enhances the tone overall. The tone of this essay is construed as encouraging and positive. Gibbs’ attitude is

The mother is seemingly unreasonable and cruel towards the girl who seems honest and innocent as she listens to her mother’s instructions on how to complete the tasks in her life. One theme of this story is that of a jealous or vindictive mother that thinks of her child as no good and commands her to be good she must obey everything she says. Another theme is that there are many unfair double standards put on young women not only by men but by other women as well.

With the time rapidly changing more and more young females are wanting to make their own decisions. As you continue to read the daughter interrupts the mother a few times to try and prove to her that she is not what she says she is. The mother refers to her as becoming a “slut” ( ) if she continues to do thing such as squatting while playing marbles, and singing Antiguan songs in Sunday school . By the daughter not having much say about those certain activities, this shows that the mother is very dominate in her approach to have her become the lady she is supposed to become. As a young woman trying to figure out her position or role in life she is given so many life lessons through her mother.

In the short story “Everyday Use,” the mother describes herself and what she does for her farm living. Walker gives her readers some impression of the mother’s appearance as a farmer and as a mother of two daughters. The descriptions echo with each other to highlight how Dee is in control how her mother looks like in her dreams. The mother shows her enthusiasm for her simple life, as her says she “can work outside all day” (Walker 1). She believes she can do the jobs all men can do by herself. She shows self-sufficient, independent, and hard-working even without a husband. Walker illustrates the mother as “a large, big boned woman with rough, man working hands” (1). On the other hand, she describes “ [her] fat keeps [her] hot in zero weather”

One of the themes of the essay is mastering the art of housekeeping and cooking. In this culture, clean clothing, a clean house, and a well-fed family prove to the community that a woman is respectable. With this understanding, the mother focuses her instruction on how the daughter should live her life in order to garner the community’s respect. Her advice is specific and varied, covering topics such as how to launder and repair clothing, how to cook food for the family, how to act in public, how to treat other people, and how to treat a man. Her advice teaches the girl how to present herself in situations in which she might be judged. Gaining the community’s respect is paramount to survival and the key attracting a man. The mother does not mention applying to college or following a career path. It is obvious that none of those options are open to her. From a cultural perspective, her path is set, and she has no other choice.

puberty bring with it a complex tradition of restrictions and behavioral guidelines. Kincaid’s poem reveals the rigidity and complexity of the social confines the girl is expected to operate underl. A girl is an induction into the women community as well as an orientation into the act of womanhood (Walkerdine et. al.). The lectured instructions given to the silent girl child vary from the housekeeping, “this is how you sweep a whole house”, to dealing with intimate relationships, “this is how a man bullies you; …how to bully a man” to medicine, “this is how to make good medicine (to abort)” (Kincaid).The inane patriarchal society expects gender stereotypes to prevail. The mother is tasked to give her daughter instructions on how to be a good woman in the stereotyped society. The advice the mother gives to the daughter cements the gender stereotype and portrays limitations on a woman (Bailey and Carol 107).

The narrator recalls her mother instilling her with the value to “do everything you can to get men to look at you, and when they do, pretend they don’t exist” (124). As a child, the narrator was dressed in clothes that were “attention-getting [and] revealing” (124). This hyper-sexualization of herself by her mother as a child in addition to her father’s lack of emotion towards her leads the narrator to lust for sexual attention for men. The narrator finds herself with a “wish to please, to charm” and the tendency to “almost never with[hold]” (126). Vadim’s constant “searching [his] dictionary for ways to tell [the narrator]” that he adores her makes the narrator’s heart “run out of [her]” because “[her] father never learned enough English to tell [her] how he felt about [her]” (147).

Parents often make it hard for a child to grow up. They tend to differentiate the actions of both genders. Females however, get treated differently and are told what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. Kincaid’s short story “Girl” illustrates how cultural conditioning relates to the norms of society. The dialogue in this story between the mother and child is quite common in real life, but it seemed as if the mother was telling her child what was right from wrong instead of showing her exactly what to do. The mother states, “Don’t sing benna in Sunday School”

In the short story “Girl”, the mother is teaching her daughter how to act and how she should behave each time in everyday life. She is giving speculative lessons on how to do laundry, the mother says wash the white clothes on Monday and wash the colored ones on Tuesdays. She says everything from laundry to ironing; how to make tea, breakfast and lunch; how to arrange for formal and informal dining The mother is trying to teach morals of life, so that when she goes away to different place she can implement what the mother had taught. She wants her daughter to have a respectable life and not to lead life like “a slut”. She thinks that the teenage might change her daughter's life and make her trump. Maybe that's why she takes out her anger and frustration on her daughter. The conflict exists as how the mother ask her daughter to lead life in her way and not giving her daughter personal preference.

This discourse permitted me to further comprehend the parts the characters play in the novel. Ladies in the content have unwittingly acknowledged themselves as the "second rate" sex, and fit in with the desires of society instead of their individual wishes. Society has standardized a high and mighty disposition, driving ladies to naturally acknowledge the estimations of society as their own. This is seen through Angela's mom, Pura Vicario, who "dedicated herself with such soul of penance to the consideration of her spouse and the raising of her youngsters that now and again one