The Representation Of Womanhood In “Girl” By Jamaica Kincaid

There are several issues raised in this story. One would be the complicated relationships with mothers and daughters as well as, how the mother is reflecting who she is throughout the story.

The mother has certain fears for her daughter. She doesn’t really trust her to make decisions on her own. She loves her daughter but feels as though she needs to step in and direct her daughter. Another issue that is raised is this notion of defining women-hood. The mother tries to define women-hood with this long list and gives us a version of women-hood that is quite traditional. The mother thinks that by doing so, the daughter will become a successful woman.

This question of what is women-hood is addressed by this story. Judging the girls character, you can say the daughter is growing up in a different world then her mother.

So, what a woman is? And what a woman has? Is an ongoing issue we see. The daughter is then given all these rules and expectations that may not be possible. The mother feels as if all these rules are followed it will lead to the daughter’s success, but what is more important is our own success instead of inheriting this definition of success.

The style of the story directly relates to the theme of the story. The author chooses to use italics instead of quotation marks to create this ongoing flow. This is important because the author is trying to overwhelm the reader so that they can relate to the overwhelming experience the daughter is facing. The daughter is the recipient of all the rules and instructions. Her job is to listen and becomes this flat character because she has no depth. Kincaid uses really particular words in order to give us some clues of the setting of this story. She uses words like “pepper pot”, “benna”,”doukona” ,”okra” to help us understand that the story is set place in the Caribbean Island. She also helps us get a better understanding of the culture of the story as well. The recurring of the word “slut” is introduced three times in the story although there is no data to support that accusation. The use of the word “slut” makes us question the mother’s motive, perhaps the mother is worried the daughter might turn out like her? Maybe she has made a few mistakes when she was younger. This leads us to think that maybe the mother is acting partly out of guilt or regret about her own behavior when she was a younger woman.