“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid

Introduction

“Girl” is a conversation between a mother and a daughter in which the mother is teaching the norms and vlaues of life. The girl is an adolescent who is learning from her mother on how to become a proper woman. Her mother is an experienced woman who has seen the whole system of life and according to her experience, she is teaching her daughter about the worldly matters. The mother lives in a culture that is a mix of both obeah and Christianity. This is more like an African based religon where the male dominance has a strong hold.

Discussion

Girl” is ostensibly a series of instructions from a mother to her daughter - instructions on how to do house chores, on suitable clothing to wear, on walking and behaving like a lady, on gardening, on playing marbles with boys, on fishing, on getting a man, on cooking, on how to “spit up in the air if you feel like it”. The writing brings to life (i.e. it evokes) a world - certainly different from Ottawa - where Okra can grow too close to the house, where there are red ants to worry about and benna songs to sing (or not sing) in Sunday school, where learning to fish is as important as how to make medicine “to throw away a child before it becomes a child”.

The voice is stern and commanding, brooking no backtalk. But there seems to be a logic at work other than the validity of the mother's voice — her intent is being undermined. Twice the daughter's voice intervenes, resisting the mother's scolding, but it isn't clear where the daughter's voice comes from. The narrator seems to contain both voices. The girl becomes present in her absence which looms over the whole affair (including the title); a kind of absence that suggests a deeper connection between the girl and the narrator, perhaps that they are the same person.

Qualities of metonomy can be found in the self-consciously repetitious, fragmented and incomplete aspects of the story - one long sentence, one long thought, fragmented by punctuation, a sudden ending - all under the title “Girl”, and yet offering the merest fragment of who this Girl might be. The dictation of propriety is relentless in what it includes and also what it excludes, the softer sides of love such as empathy, fun, encouragement. The Girl's presence is in ...