Comparing Girl By Jamaica Kincaid And Buxton Spice

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, women were expected to live domestic lives while their male counterparts lived public lives. This meant that women were stuck at home doing chores around the home and raising the children while the man of the household went out and worked to make money for the family (Sailus, "Feminism in the 19th Century: Women's Rights, Roles, and Limits”). In the short story “girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid, a girl is being told what her life is going to consist of and how she will have to complete certain tasks around the house to care for her family. Texts can be changed drastically by the amount of historical and cultural background the reader has on the topic addressed in the text. I read this …show more content…
In the passage written by Carol Baily, the short story is analyzed and critiqued for its theme or central message. This source was a book review on two short stories, including the short story “Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid and the novel Buxton Spice written by Oonya Kempadoo. These two stories were written about the gender specific roles of women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The two reviews state how these two stories similarly emphasized some of the issues that plagued the world during this setting. The analysis brought up some interesting points that I had not considered. The review states that because this story is written in a list that gives advice to a little girl on how to better perform certain tasks that it emphasized the problems that occurred during this time period relating to gender performance (Baily 107). When I first read this story I did not consider this point and I just saw a list. I thought that maybe this was signifying that there were certain standards that women were held to by superior people in their life. I thought that this short story was written to emphasize the fact that these standards were held to high for women due to the length of the list. Due to the fact that the list only included everyday household tasks that woman were expected to perform I also thought that this list emphasized the fact that women weren’t …show more content…
I read consulted another source that was a study conducted on women during the 20th century. The study was to test the idea that traditional women view men as superior and liberated women do not. The study found that the traditional women did find the man more superior, while the liberated woman found the woman more intimidating than the man. Based on this study, the idea that in general women coming from a traditional environment often view men as superior to them (Clark 81). This adds another element to the short story “Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid. As I mentioned earlier when I initially read the text I thought that this list was recited to the girl by her mother or a motherly figure in the girl’s life. I thought this because of the fact that most of the advice given to the young girl was about daily household chores that were usually performed by a women in the setting of this short story. I thought that this information was being passed down to ensure that the young girl would know how to do daily household chores to ensure that she would be able to provide for her family just as this motherly figure has done for the little girl. After reading the study, I changed my mind about who I thought that the deliverer of the list was. Instead of imagining a women I imagined a man because of the fact that the study informed me that traditional women view a man to be superior to a woman. In