Girl

Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" Response Paper

It can be assumed that this daughter probably just started her monthly period, from the line towards the beginning to "soak [her] little clothes right after [she] takes them off." This kind of event, the ability to bear children, is representative of a little girl becoming a woman. In this sense, the speech of the mother makes a little more sense. She is explaining to her daughter all the things she will need to know as a woman. The regrettable part for the girl is that she will have to grow up so quickly. No more playing with marbles, no more picking flowers, or singing benna on Sundays. In an instant she has earned increased responsibility for her actions.

Kincaid seems to greatly understand how a mother, who has grown up being the subordinate to a Man, has trouble changing her ideals and tries to pass them on to her daughter. She probably writes from experience, which helps the characters of the mother and daughter in "Girl" to be that much more believable. The daughter doesn't know how to please her mother and she has to learn a lot of information very quickly, which must be overwhelming. Meanwhile, the mother seems to never approve of her daughter. Even in the last lines, when the mother tells her daughter to always feel the bread at a bakery for freshness, and the daughter questions "what if the baker won't let" her, the mother gives her final condescending comment to her daughter in this story: She questions that after all of this advice she has given her, is she "really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?"