Jamaica Kincaid Girl

In an era when young ladies are raised to be both strong and independent, it is jarring to read a story centered around the repression of women for the sake of propriety. In the short story, “Girl,” by Jamaica Kincaid, a mother gives her young daughter meticulous instructions on how to be a domestic, respectable wife. These instructions range from cooking tips to cleaning methods, and they all aim to repress any unconventional traits her daughter may harbor. “Girl” is a second-person narrative told from a mother’s point of view. Due to the narrator’s misogynistic and patronizing worldview, the reader is forced to ask what being a “good girl” even means, why it’s so important to be one, and how the values of the narrator affect the information

Throughout the story, the mother is adamant that her daughter learn how to cook and clean properly, in addition to keeping up a conservative persona. Based off of this overarching theme in the mother’s orders, the reader can infer that, from the narrator’s point of view, to be a “good girl” one must follow the traditional domestic guidelines that societies have been built off of for generations. To further cement this idea, Kincaid writes, “this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well” (Kincaid

As a result of the narrator’s own life experiences, she has developed a worldview that centers around a certain stereotypical image of how women should act. Throughout the story, the narrator is passing this information to her daughter, which she views as her responsibility as a parent. This results in the narrator being both impassioned and uncompromising in her lessons, an example being “and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming” (Kincaid 120). As can be seen, these pertinent lessons are a product of her conformist ideas, and without these views, the story would no longer