In the short story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid is a story that everyone can related to. The story is about a mother telling her daughter what to do, what not to do and how to do things. Kind of like society or parents or a friends of what to do. There has also been always been expectations of what to do and how to do things in life regards of gender, nationality or religion. The male has he’s duties and the female has different duties. However, in the typical society today, a person is supposed to graduate from high school and go straight in to an Ivy League university, to get a degree in a field of study that makes lot of money. While working a person must save money for that dream big house with the white picket fence. At the same time, you have to look for that perfect spouse so you can have the big beautiful dream wedding. After the wedding it’s the romantic honeymoon to Bora Bora. After a couple years the baby comes, and you are a happy family. Typically, that is what parents teach their children of what is what is expected of them. …show more content…
“Girl” makes the impression that the mother wants the daughter to take over the “women’s” work around the house as well as she tells her which day to wash the white clothes Monday, wash the colored clothes on Tuesday, and she is teaching her how to iron her father’s clothes the way he likes them done and how to sew on a button; “This is how to make a button-hole for the button you have just sewed on.” (380) The mother also is teaching her daughter how to cook for the family. “Cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil,” (380) so that everyone will eat them. The mother also discusses table manners, “always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn some-one else’s stomach.”
In Stevie Cameron’s essay “Our Daughters, Ourselves,” she proclaims “ We tell our bright, shining girls that they can be anything: firefighters, doctors, policewoman, lawyers, scientists, soldiers, athletes, artists. What we don't tell them, yet, is how hard it will be. Maybe, we say to ourselves, by the time they’re older it will be easier for them than it was for us.” My parents raised my sisters and I very congruous with this view. They would always tell us that we could do or be anything we wanted when we got older. However, contrary to Cameron’s apprehension on the matter, my parents always told us how difficult it would be straight from the beginning. They told us how financially strenuous becoming a doctor would be. They told us how
The society aspect of women roles and the duties as a woman. Society plays a role that is shown in a parallel between Girl and the Women’s Swimming Pool. In girl, her role is restricted in the direction by her mother. The restrictions come’s with consequences that she has to follow. These restrictions are guidelines that may or may not help her as a woman but she is subjected to do them in order to survive in a society that is controlled by men. While in The Women’s Swimming Pool, the young women finds a way to escape her old culture values and adapt to a new culture. She will be forced to make a decision that will put her in a position that she has to either leave her grandmother or her desire to the pool. Her grandmother is a symbol of her old culture values and the pool is symbolized as the new culture looking forward to change. As the old generation no one is willing to accept change but in the new generations they are willing to search for the change. Which comes with consequences and a great deal of
The time period from “Girl” portrays how women were treated and forced to act when they were raised as oppose of young boys. Through out the story we understand that young ladies were forced to learn how do domestic duties from a very young age. An example of this is” this is how you sew on a button…this
Girl by Jamaica Kincaid demonstrate how a mother cautions her daughter, in becoming a responsible woman in her society. Although the daughter hasn’t gotten into adolescence yet, the mother fears that her daughter’s current behavior, if continued, will tip to a life of promiscuity. The mother believes that a woman’s status or propriety determines the quality of her life in the community. Hence, gender roles, must be carefully guarded to maintain a respectable front. Her advice centers on how to uphold responsibility. The mother cautions her daughter endlessly; emphasising on how much she wants her to realize her role in the society by acting like woman in order to be respected by the community and the world at large. Thus, Jamaica Kincaid’s
A person in these roles typically “nurtures” and cares for their children in addition to keeping a neat and tidy household. However, Rose Mary displays a complete lack of desire to conform to this gender role. As a result, her family’s quality of life suffers. She exemplifies this lack of desire when Jeannette discusses the cooking situation in the Walls household. She says “Mom didn't like cooking much. ‘Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour’, she’d ask us, ‘when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?’ ” (Walls 34). Rose Mary would prefer to cook once a week and serve the same meal daily, risking food poisoning (34). Therefore, Rose Mary displays an utter disregard for the lives of her children by refusing to cook them food daily. It is widely accepted that one of the mother’s main roles in a household is to cook food for her children. By not living up to her role as a mother, Rose Mary not only negatively affects their lifestyle by forcing them to eat the same food everyday, but also severely risks their health by forcing them to eat spoiled food. As such, Rose Mary’s declining to fulfill the traditional role of a mother is a large problem in the Walls household. Although many may question why Rex could not cook for his
Gender have a big effect on how a mother feels about her child, traditionally, every mother has a wish for her children to be the best they can be. But at what point does a simple instruction become words that have been said to many times? Traditionally, If it is a boy the one wish of a mother is for him to get married to some women who can cook and take care of him. In the other hand, there are two kinds of mother wishes for her daughter, one where the mother sees other children with amazing talents or grades and thinks her child could be just like them, if not more; continually places pressure on her daughter to become some kind of genius or have some talent. The second is for her to get married to a rich guy who she can take care of. In the short story the mother went over and over rules her daughter must follow for society to accept her. “don’t walk bare-head in the hot sun . . .always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach. . .” (813). All this comments are about how not to look like a slut around people. And how not to embarrass
In her story “Currents” Hannah Vosckuil uses symbolism, and a reverse narrative structure to show the story of how unnamed sympathetic and antagonistic characters react differently to a traumatic event. Symbolism can be found in this story in the way that Gary does not mind sitting in the dark alone at the end of the day as well as how both of his girls are affected by the symbolism of hands. One holding a boy’s hand for the first time and the other becoming sick after seeing the dead boy’s hand fall off the stretcher. The sympathetic and antagonistic manner of these characters is shown when both girls are told by their grandmother that they must return to the water to swim the next day. The grandmother sees this simply as a way of encouraging them and keeping them from becoming afraid of the water. However, the girls see this as a scary proposition because of what had happened, showing the grandmother as an antagonist character to the little girls.
Members of this society must learn what the appropriate way for them to behave is and what to expect of themselves and others. Growing up, gender roles were set on me as I played with fire trucks and cars, and my sisters played with Barbie's. The types of movies we watched were different and the types of books we read were also different. It would be thought of as bizarre for me, a male, to cry during Titanic, or to read Cinderella.
Even with the advancement of women in society, their roles and societal expectations have not changed. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” are two stories with varied elements set in different periods in history, that show the role society has deemed as belonging to women. "The Story of an Hour" was written in the year 1894, almost a century before Kincaid wrote "Girl". However, despite the large gap in the times of the authors, a common theme emerges and that is the theme of the oppression of women and the role they are expected to assume in society.
“Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid is essentially a set of instructions given by an adult, who is assumed to be the mother of the girl, who is laying out the rules of womanhood, in Caribbean society, as expected by the daughter’s gender. These instructions set out by the mother are related to topics including household chores, manners, cooking, social conduct, and relationships. The reader may see these instructions as demanding, but these are a mother’s attempt, out of care for the daughter, to help the daughter to grow up properly. The daughter does not appear to have yet reached adolescence, however, her mother believes that her current behavior will lead her to a life of promiscuity. The mother postulates that her daughter can be saved from a life of promiscuity and ruin by having domestic knowledge that would, in turn also, empower her as a productive member in their community and the head of her future household. This is because the mother assumes that a woman’s reputation and respectability predisposes the quality of a woman’s life in the community.
Daughters have always had a special bond with their fathers, even at the time where women did not have the same rights as men, and were seen as the weaker sex. This father is no different, in wanting the best for his little girl. The father in this letter wants the daughter to accomplish her roles differently than the women before her because he knows that women are capable of accomplishing “male” tasks. The letter also addresses how women were seen and treated by men and the changes that were occurring in order to gain a status quo for both men and women.
In the short story, “Girl,” the narrator describes certain tasks a woman should be responsible for based on the narrator’s culture, time period, and social standing. This story also reflects the coming of age of this girl, her transition into a lady, and shows the age gap between the mother and the daughter. The mother has certain beliefs that she is trying to pass to her daughter for her well-being, but the daughter is confused by this regimented life style. The author, Jamaica Kincaid, uses various tones to show a second person point of view and repetition to demonstrate what these responsibilities felt like, how she had to behave based on her social standing, and how to follow traditional customs.
As a girl, she must act properly and not play the way boys do. Boys are aggressive and dirty as seen by society; a girl like her is supposed to be kind and proper. Then the mother explains in one section how to do housework and chores; a woman’s job. “This is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so they don’t have a crease” (Kincaid 67). Kincaid writes that the mother is instructing the daughter on how to do her father’s clothing.
The father in the story was a fox farmer. He raised foxes and when their fur was prime, he skinned them and sold their pelts for profit. Growing up, “the girl” sought for attention from her father, therefore, she began to enjoy helping him work outside with the foxes. “My father did not talk to me unless it was about the job we were doing … Nevertheless I worked willingly under his eyes, and with a feeling of pride.” Consequently, she began to dread working in the kitchen with her mother, and thus loss respect for her mother’s subservient position in the household. When describing her mother’s housework it was “endless” compared to her father’s work outside, which was “ritualistically important.” This obvious resentment for society’s womanly duties symbolizes the narrator’s desire to be more than “just a girl”.
When Kincaid wrote, “this is how you hem a buttonhole…” the process to hem a buttonhole began to symbolize a sense of domesticity to save her “sexual reputation”. The mother is so strongly bent on straying the daughter away from anything that could affect their reputation. Consequently, she is forcing her daughter into social norms and stereotypical ways a woman is expected to behave. In a way, it can be said that the mother is domesticating her daughter into a life to keep her from promiscuity. Before the mother says, “… the slut you are so bent on becoming” (Kincaid 92) each time, she states a certain way the daughter should behave. From this we can see that the mother believes that women can only be seen two ways: of respect or of promiscuity. Due to this belief, it can be concluded that the mother will say and do anything to her daughter to shape her into a respectable member in their society and creating her into the stereotypical woman. Kincaid faced this exact situation in her childhood when her mother tried to domesticate her, when she did not seek to be a social norm. Kincaid was disapproved of by her family when she became a writer, much like the daughter in Girl would be. Kincaid uses the mother’s instructions on sweeping, cooking, cleaning, shopping, and gardening to express the domesticity that is expected from the daughter to turn her into the