why woman wash the dishes

* When they went round to the back porch they saw a shadow and ran away. As they were running they heard a shotgun go

“Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid and was published in 1978. It was her first of ten stories in “At the Bottom of the River.” The story is about a young girl who instructs by her mother in the duties of how a woman is expected to become in life inspired by limited opportunities for girls at her teenager ages. Her instructions underscore that the women must master all kinds of domestic chores. She has to learn “How to sweep the whole house…how to set the table for breakfast…how to set the table for dinner...” (Girl, p.121) Most importantly, that she needs to learn is “how you smile to someone that you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely.” (Girl, p. 121) Moreover, she will have to learn everything that will able to help her to become a woman that could be responsible in life and take good care of her own family in the future. In all, the mother is just trying her best to instructing her daughter how to be a good and a respected girl in a patriarchal society. A society which sees women either angels or devils.

The mother in the story “Girl” gives helpful advice this advice will help her daughter be a better woman in her present and future life. She explains to her daughter the ways she should keep a house clean by doing chores such as washing clothes , sewing buttons and hemming dresses,

The story is basically 2 pages of commands being told to one from another. At first, you could say the narrator was talking to a servant, telling them everything that they need to do. You might think this, until reading further that is. Shortly into the story it is very clear that these list of “commands” are being passed down from a mother to her daughter. Everything from “wash white clothes on Monday” (1) to “you mustn’t speak to wharf-rat boys” (10). It is very clear that the daughter is most likely a young curious teenager. She gets a lot of directions about housekeeping, but after a while you realize the point is not just about cleanliness, but about how to keep your reputation intact. As much as we would like to believe that people are not judging us by everything that we do, we realize that this story is more than a list of command on how to keep a clean house, but in fact how to keep a good social standing. By reading this story, you can tell that the mother is trying to make her daughter understand that she will be very successful in life if she maintains a sort of social class.

The Washwoman, an old woman already into her seventies, works a full time job, requiring hard manual labor. Instead succumbing to old age the Washwoman battles it, refusing let her absence of youth keep her from completing the task at hand. During a cold polish winter, the washwoman, now into her eighties, succumb to a deadly sickness, still she determined to finish her weekly laundry saying “ I could not rest easy in my bed because of the wash. The wash would not let me die” (Isaac singer). Raging against her suffering health, the old woman refused even death in order to complete her task. Despite the difficulties sickness and old age, The Washwoman completes the task set before her, choosing to fight her struggles head

“Oh my gawd ! Bon Qui Qui girl how ya been” !! Said Little Hood.

Right then she heard hard heavy footsteps outside in the corridor before her door was flung open. She opened her mouth to scream but then she realized it was her husband and she started to laugh instead. “Oh you scared me dear.

The piece appears to start with the girl at a very young age. For example near the beginning, the mother asks her daughter, “is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?” The girl responds very innocently, “I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday School”. As the story goes on, the mother tells and shows her daughter how to keep a decent, orderly household. “Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap… this is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt… this is how you sweep a whole house… this is how you set a table for breakfast.”

The sound of heavy footsteps walking up the stairs disrupted her musing. She was alone, wasn’t she? Did Ray come home? No. He said he would call her later tonight unless something happened in court.

Indonesian gamelan is performed with more than just a purpose of entertainment. It is a communal activity and is made up of a large orchestra of

Behind her in the living room, someone cleared his throat. She panicked, she didn’t know is she should turn around or not. She didn’t know if she wanted to see what frightful thing would be standing in her living room. Behind her, she could hear someone walking closer and closer to her very slowly.

As the girl grows up, her mother teaches her that a woman's job in life is to clean. She who wants everything to be perfect, has a high standard for sanitation, and makes her daughter clean and not have a social life. The daughter would say “ I swept the floor till she was satisfied,”(Alvarez 8). The little girl who embraced her mother's work ethic and envy’s her pursuit of perfection, disagreed with her mother's view of cleaning is the best a woman could do for herself So she embraced her own view of life and decided to become “a woman working at home on her art house keeping paper as if it were her heart,”(Alvarez 18-19). Meaning that she embraced herself and did what she thought was right, and decided to live a life that she needed to live, not her

As I walk up the stairs to the attic I hear a couple of quiet thumps. When I walk in the door I couldn't believe what I seen. Master Rufus was laying on the ground and dana had a knife in her hand with a look of hate on her face.” What did you do Dana?” I asked

This novel greatly illustrates the results of labeling the role of women in society. In the world of the Cooks, females are the masters of the house—the home is their dominion. It is from the home that the women glean their sense of dignity and worth. “Farm women are proud of the fact that they can keep the house looking as though the farm stays outside” (121). In their day to day lives, these women do not have a great deal to be proud of, but the physical state of their home is a visual example of the labor that they commit. So, it is from the state of their living environment that they derive a sense of self. Similar to the men comparing

In this poem “Woman’s Work”, the mother is forced to do household cleaning which represents a domestic life and the impact of gender specific roles. This poem is written in the third person point of view. The speaker is the daughter of a mother who doesn’t work outside, but only inside of the house, and is forced to do household cleaning with her as she hears her friends playing outside in the street. Author Julia Alvarez uses imagery, simile, and alliteration to portray the meaning of the poem that women work harder than men.