Jamaica Kincaid Girl Essay

In her story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid describes the multitude of tasks the unnamed girl must complete, as listed out by her mother. The story, being short and not containing a single period, showcases the continual pressure the girl faces to avoid the incessant danger of being deemed a “slut”. It also highlights the internal tension the mother apparently feels to help her daughter avoid this title. One may find the story to be hauntingly familiar of another time, despite its’ age difference. By making use of a commanding tone, definitive word choice, and blunt sentence structure, Kincaid shows what it takes to become the “right” kind of woman to ultimately show the absurdity of these stipulations.

To convey her message, Kincaid sets up

the story in a very specific way. The story is set-up with the mother as the speaker and reads like a chore list of all the things the daughter must remember, do, and not do. The first line reads, “Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the colors on Tuesday…” It is easy for the reader to see the girl’s perspective here, in fact, at some points, it nearly feels like the audience is being told what to do. Next, the only two characters of the story remain unnamed. We learn few details about the girl, and all of those come from educated guesses. The title does not aid in this. Instead all we really know is that the speaker is a mom and she is speaking to a daughter- both of whom are females. However, this is all one must know of the characters to understand the passage. It is vague because it is not one specific daughter or mother that goes through this struggle, rather Kincaid argues it is all females.
Strong and demanding words in the story are used to show a large amount of concern the mother feels towards her daughter.

All of the mother’s statements have a definitive nature to them. Each statement begins with “don’t”, “you mustn't”, “always”, and most often: “this is how”. This choice of phrasing on Kincaid’s end shows the mother’s experience. This knowledge has, presumably, been learned from years of a certain kind of treatment. The main concern of the mother is that the daughter will not be respected by society and will be deemed a “slut”. This is evident by the repetition of the strongly connotative word, as it appears three times throughout the brief text. Each time it is said, it escalates, almost coming across as anger. Within the first use, “...the slut I know you are so bent on becoming”, the mother is assuming that without direction, the girl will become one. It is also said right after a comment about walking “like a lady” and not like a slut. This dual sided view- that a girl is either a lady (invokes a feeling of being proper, respected), or a slut- is not the type of lesson a loving mother would teach her daughter just because. It is instead from fear that the mother so desperately wants to teach her daughter how to be a lady. One could even go as far as to say that the culture is having affect on the mother, as in each use she assumes her daughter is “bent on becoming” a slut. The noticeable burden the mother feels to enlighten her daughter shows the

values of the culture during their time.
The pace at which Kincaid has written the story is nearly jarring. Each statement is followed by a semi-colon to form a story composed of, essentially, one giant sentence. Even the question marks are followed by a semi-colon. This list structure is chosen by Kincaid to showcase the ridiculous amount of things the girl must remember to do. The list bears resemblance to an actual list of chores. There is hardly any time in between for the girl to respond or think. The speaking is at such a fast pace, that when the mother mentions the girl singing a type of song at Sunday school, it takes the girl the length of another command to interject with, “but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school”. In fact, the girl only interjects twice- both times to defend herself. The mother also only speaks of how to perform domestic activities, such as ironing shirts, sweeping the house, setting the table for a variety of situations etc. The type of instructions said serves to enforce the role this girl must fit, which Kincaid wants to show the audience is nonsense.
Despite this story having been written in 1983, we see the sentiment Kincaid is expressing to be timeless and universal.

In the modern world, gender and gender roles are a controversial subject, gaining a large amount of publicity in the last few years. In a time when our country’s citizens are so divided, it is important to recognize the necessity of viewing from the other person's perspective. In the case of “Girl”, the female represents all young girls. And although not all things the girl must do relate directly to the world today, it is the message that remains universal: that a number of things a girl must do to avoid being looked down upon is unreasonable. Kincaid goes a step further by critiquing “slut” as a word to insult. She begs the audience to ask, how can something as simple as squatting to play a game make a girl slut? With this, she also forces us to question the definition of “slut”, a woman’s sexuality, and society’s place to judge that sexuality. These are the types of points that a progressive society must bring up, especially in times like these, and hopefully with a conviction as strong as

Kincaid.