Gabriel D. González
Professor Mongar
INGL 3104-113
May 9, 2003
“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid
In the story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid presents the goal of the mother to reproduce
herself both biologically and socially in her daughter, thereby fulfilling her labor as a mother,
just as she was produced by her mother.(Marxist reading) Throughout the story Kincaid
emphasizes how the mother instructed her daughter into labor, social roll, lady’s manners and
love. The mother wants to dictate how her daughter should only be what her mother says she
should be.
The story’s setting relations to Kincaid’s birthplace, Antigua. Especially, it can be
interpreted, that was located at a sugar plantation as a slaver. The story presents a daughter that
should learned all the roles of wife/domestic: do laundry, cooking, sewing, light farming, to iron.
This roles are essential “to prevent yourself from looking like the slut you a re so bent on
becoming,” express the mother from the story. These roles were the base of a real woman at this
time, the 50’. In Antigua they didn’t had “radio, electricity, running water, and indoor pluming”
as Kincaid express. This is similar at the story because they have the same limitations “Wash the
white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap,” express the mother. This implies that
they have to wash the clothes at a river.
“Girl” is presents only two characters the mother and the daughter. The lack of names is
cause by reduction of both roles to the labor involved in the reproduction of one’s position;
neither the mother nor her daughter, her replacement, are individualized in any way. At the story
is presented to similar character, both with no relationship a all. This is presented when the
mother asked “it is true that you sing benna in Sunday school?,” answering herself, “don’t sing
benna on Sunday school,” and the daughter answering, “but I don’t sing benna in Sundays at all
and never in Sunday school.” This implicates a lack of proper communication between a mother
and a daughter because she should have known the answered to that question. A parent that
communicates properly with its child should know that simple information. But at this story the
goal of the mother is not to develop a relationship with her daughter, is to replicate herself, by
oppression in her daughter.
The mother is constantly dictating what to do, and how to do things to her daughter. She
wants to create a perfect woman that knows everything about house keeping, but also about love.
The mother express something that is very shocking “be sure to wash every day, even if it is with
your own spit.” This means that she have to accomplish all her duties no matter what she had to
do, or scarifies. Another lesson that she thought her was “to love a man, and if this doesn’t work
there are other ways.” And also when she says “this is how to make a good medicine to throw
away a child before even it becomes a child.” These two expressions are focus in the same
direction having sex within been married. What kind of mother tells her daughter to abort a gift
of love? This is a contradiction because she wants her daughter to not become a slut, but she is
teaching her how to be one. Also she teaches her how to be a hypocrite, telling her “this is how
you smile to someone that you don’t like at all.”
“Girl” is a story with a direct lesson, “oppression leads to oppression”.(Marxist reading)
A mother that had been taught to be oppress, does the same to her daughter generation to
generation, “this is how to make ends meet,” express the mother. The mother’s dream was to
lead her daughter trough the right path in life, a good wife/domestic, has turned her daughter in
someone that asked “but if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?” The result is a woman that
only serves and survives.
Sources:
Themes
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/Virtualit/fiction/elements.asp?e=6
Sugar plantation
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/fiction/images/culturaldocs/kincaidengraving2_large.gif
Slavers working
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/fiction/images/culturaldocs/kincaid-photo2.gif
Marxist critism
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/fiction/criticaldefine/marxessay.pdf
Biography
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Kincaid.html
Jamaica Kincaid
http://www.albany.edu/pr/writers/kincaid.html
The story speaking
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/Virtualit/fiction/Girl/story.asp?p=1&font=
Definition of Marxist Critism
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Marxist_criticism.html
Listen to the story
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/fiction/Girl/audio.asp
The book Literature