Jamaica Kincaid Girl

In the short story "Girl", by Jamaica Kincaid the main character is a mother, speaking to her daughter. The tone, mood, and tempo of the story suggests that the mother isn't having a nurturing conversation with her daughter, but nagging her instead. Throughout the story there is no plot and no point is made. While the mother is speaking, the daughter only responds twice. The first time she says "but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school", her mother disregards her comment and continues her nagging (Kincaid 530). The second time the daughter speaks, her words are "but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?" and this time she gets a response, "you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of …show more content…
Kincaid shows the reader that the two live in a very conservative and strict cultural society, where women are held to a very high standard and most are responsible for taking care of housework and fulfill motherly duties.
Scenario A: Girl goes through life as she is supposed to. After a couple years at the age that sexual curiosity tends to begin, girl has obtained a very basic level of knowledge. During this stage of her life she is withdrawn from her studies at school to learns how to become a woman of the West Indies culture. She is to be molded into a woman by her mother figure. Over time girl hears abundance of instructions from her mother's teachings. Some of these instructions include "Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry" (Kincaid 530), this is very important because it's the first indicator of the setting not being in America and of the sort of culture girl and her mother belong to. Although some of the instructions are tools that are vital for girl to have when one day taking care of her own household, most of the instructions are about