"Girl" is a short story written by Jamaica Kincaid that was included in At the Bottom of the River (1983). It appeared in the June 26, 1978 issue of The New Yorker.
Contents
Plot summary
The story is a to-do list and a how-to-do list containing one sentence of a 650 word dialogue. It features what the girl hears from her mother. The story is mostly told in the second person. The girl hears her mother's instructions and the behavior her mother is trying to instill in her.You can see that the mother is trying to give the girl some sort of advice and prescribing the way she should go about her life and daily tasks. We can infer that her mother probably got this language from someone in her past and it was most likely the way her mother spoke to her when she was a young girl, so that's all she's ever known. During the story, her mother's voice sounds somewhat condescending and critical when speaking, suggesting that the girl is likely to become a "slut." For example, in the short story, the mother states, "on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming." Throughout the piece we can see that the mother is trying to pass down certain beliefs from her culture to her daughter that the mother wants her to inhabit. The mother constantly reminds her daughter of how to become the "perfect" woman in order to fit into the society that they live in. Also, the chores and behaviors that the mother makes the daughter inhabit are directly related to how women's duties should relate to a man's.
Like most of Kincaid's piece of writing, "Girl" is based on her own relationship between her and her mother while growing up. Jamaica Kincaid has also revealed in interviews that the setting of this short story takes place in Antigua.
Structure
The theme for "Girl" is mother-daughter dispute. In this poem, the mother goes on and on teaching the daughter how to be the perfect woman in society. As the story goes on, the mother’s directions get more demanding. Whenever the daughter says something, which is rare, it’s a snap back at her mother.
At the end of the story, the daughter asks, “But what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?” The mother replies, “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?” After the mother went through step-by-step telling her daughter how to be perfect by her definition, she asks what to do if she’s not good enough, as if saying that everything her mother has learned is bogus.