Jamaica Kincaid’s short tale Girl was published in At the Bottom of the River (1983). It was published in The New Yorker on June 26, 1978. The conversation in the story comprises one sentence and 650 words worth of to-do and how-to lists. What the girl learns from her mother is included in it. Most of the narrative is presented in the second person. The girl is aware of the rules and behaviors her mother is attempting to instill in her. The mother attempts to guide the girl and outline how she should conduct herself in daily activities. One could speculate that her mother learned this language from an individual in her youth. She had always known this because that is how her mother spoke to her when she was a little girl. This essay will report on the narrative Girl by Jamaica Kincaid by discussing her life to see the themes in the text.
In Girl, a mother gives her daughter some advice, and the girl interrupts only twice, once to clarify something and once to defend herself. She offers guidance with the double goals of correcting and supporting her youngster. Although Kincaid frequently repeats herself, notably when advising her daughter against being a “slut,” she does use semicolons to divide the warnings and words of wisdom (Rosenberg & Vitez, 2019). In addition to these repetitions, the girl does not progress chronologically; the stream has no beginning, middle, or end.
In addition, the mother offers the young girl plenty of sound advice to help her in the future as she takes care of the house. She shows her kid the ropes in domestic duties like cooking, table arranging, cleaning, and laundry (Jayasree, 2018). The girl’s mother also teaches her invaluable life lessons, such as fish-trapping and herbal medicine-making. These sage observations give the impression that the women are from a remote area with a low standard of living, where advice like this is essential for daily life.
The mother advises her daughter on the ways of the world and provides her advice on how to achieve happiness. As an illustration of her empathetic nature, she warns her daughter that both men and women can be “bullied” on occasion and explains her concerns for her daughter’s future encounters with boys (Rosenberg & Vitez, 2019). Moreover, she argues that there is a wide range of relationships, some of which are doomed to fail. Her mother also teaches her daughter how to behave in different social situations, such as when she must engage with someone she dislikes.
In conclusion, Girl by Jamaica Kincaid is an example of a mother telling her daughter to do things properly. Her lessons are often presented repeatedly, and if the instructions are not followed, the daughter must respond with an explanation and justification for doing them wrong. Nonetheless, the girl’s mother attempts to impart the life lessons she learned from her mother to assist and protect her child from the dangers of living in a vertical society. In the story, the girl’s mother tries to teach her to be more responsible, careful, and smart. She does this by teaching her how to swim, cook, trap animals and help with household work like cooking, ironing, and cleaning. However, this story is full of repetition and has no definite goals or plot; it gives us a sense of the emotional life of a child growing up in the countryside of Jamaica during the 1950s.
References
Jayasree, K. (2018). Linguistic-Literary Camouflage in Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl”. IUP Journal of English Studies, 13(2). Web.
Rosenberg, N., & Vitez, M. (2019). Jamaica Kincaid’s “girl” and the challenge of growing up in medical training. JAMA, 322(13), 1238-1239.