Domesticity, reputation and mother-daughter relationship were portrayed major playing vital role in shaping the identities of adolescent woman. It is ironic how “the slut you are so bent upon becoming” comes up three times in the story and only once the girl’s defence response to her mother, “I don’t sing henna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school”. The story lacks conventional narrative structure. It has a more poetic structure, which is very rich with meaning, despite its brevity. "An unwritten rule book" for how women should behave. Laws and policies are one thing, but Jamaica Kincaid is showing how patriarch is reproduced and reinforced most powerfully by cultural norms and expectations passed on by families, including by women themselves. …show more content…
There are countries in the world where men and woman both are equal in all phases of life, however, the third world countries still have woman who are fighting and rebellion against the injustice towards them. Kincaid writes this story very efficiently in only one sentence thus two page long; the story lists what to do and what not to. An advice from the adult mother to her adolescent girl to live unto the expectations of the community; the mother warns her daughter about the “slut” she thinks her daughter is bent upon becoming. What would a world look like if the genders were more equal and, in social terms, women were given the same freedoms men take for granted? Equality and freedom to choose how to behave is the right of every individual without any discrimination against the gender, the race or the caste; the message very well displayed in Jamaica Kincaid’s