“Girl” is a critically acclaimed short story by the Caribbean-American writer Jamaica Kincaid. It was first published in 1978 in The New Yorker magazine. The story revolves around the stream of consciousness interaction between two women, a mother and a daughter. The mother is giving wisdom to the daughter in the form of short, declarative sentences and commands. The conversation ranges from advice about domestic chores to advice about sexual chores, indicating that both housekeeping and sexuality are a part of a woman's domestic labor. The mother dominates the conversation, as the daughter only seems to speak twice, although when she does speak, the daughter is standing up for herself. The daughter's conversation is marked by italics. In Jamaica Kincaid's “Girl”, the mother teachers her daughter about the domestic labor that is necessary to run a home, and that gender roles force women to perform, while at the same time giving her daughter advice on how to avoid getting trapped in domestic labor by learning how to control her sexuality.
The mother looks at what life holds for the daughter in future and tailors her language to reflect this. First of all, each time the mother mentions her daughter's sexuality, she does so in a grammatical structure that suggests they are talking about the future. The word “becoming” is always included, which indicates that the daughter is not already a sexually active woman. She is not already a slut, but only possibly becoming one. This indicates there are other possibilities; the daughter has other choices. She does not have to become sexually active. She can stop that type of behavior, gain control over her sexuality, and have the opportunity to become something else. In other words, the reader should not look at this advice entirely as the mother attacking the daughter's character or morality, but rather as the mother telling the daughter she has the power to become anything she wants; she does not have to become sexually active, and thus a mother, trapped in the world of domestic labor. The advice given by the mother is representative of the views held in society regarding women and gender roles.
Furthermore, the advice is reflective of the sexual roles and the dangers that can possibly come from an unchecked sexual behavior. Some of the other advice that the mother gives the daughter in Jamaica Kincaid's short story “Girl” about sexuality further proves that the mother is trying to prevent her daughter from being trapped in a life of domestic labor by learning how to avoid sexual labor. For example, continuing the advice about avoiding the wharf rats, the mother teaches the daughter how to interact with men in a manner so the men do not think the daughter is sexually attracted to them, saying “this is how you smile to someone you don't like at all” (Kincaid 1). She teaches the daughter how to interact with men she does not know or meeting for the first time. For example she says, “and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming” (Kincaid 2). The mother is teaching her how to present herself so that the men recognize that the daughter is not a slut, and therefore not a target for quick and meaningless sexual activity. The advice given by mother to daughter is aimed at empowering her.
For instance, this advice about wharf boys and not walking or looking like a slut is aimed an empowering the daughter and keeping her from being imprisoned by her sexuality is driven home in the next few lines of the story. The mother is giving the daughter advice about her health when she says, “this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child”(Kincaid 2). The mother is giving the daughter advice on how to perform an abortion on herself; basically, she is teaching her birth control. Again, it is important not to read this as a form of petty moralizing on the mother's part. Rather, this is the key evidence in the story. The mother does not want her daughter to become trapped in a world of domestic labor, and the best way to keep her future filled with opportunity is to avoid reproductive labor.
In a show of how traditional gender roles shape the story, the mother offers practical advice about domestic labor and raising a family and keeping a good home. This is not to imply that the mother's advice is negative, rather, the point is that traditional gender roles trapped women in a position of having to do all of the domestic labor around the house, without pay. The mother has to cook. She has to clean. She has to make clothes for everyone in the family, and then wash and mend those clothes. (Kincaid) In addition, she also has to act as a wife to her husband. While the mother may love her family, she really doesn't have any choice about what she can do with her life. She is trapped by the traditional boundaries of gender and sexuality. The mother has a lot of advice about how to perform the duties that are assigned by traditional gender roles, however, the best advice she can give her daughter is to avoid this situation all together.
Despite the lesson packed and seemingly rigid lifestyle presented by the mother, near the end of the short story “Girl”, Jamacia Kincaid has the mother say the following lines “this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn't fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread”(Kincaid)? These lines can be read in a number of ways, and they bring a note of optimism and good humor to the end of a story which otherwise might seem rather bleak.
Leaving aside the sexual innuendo, spitting in the air is often an image of being care free worry free. If the daughter avoids the trap of sexual labor and reproduction, she can be carefree. The daughter can focus more on things like making ends meet and actually planning out a future with a career and opportunities. The last line especially has a positive and humorous double meaning. Certainly there is a sexual image, but there is also a positive materialistic one. Bread is a colloquialism for money. Overall, the mother has been giving the daughter advice about how to avoid sex and instead to focus on bread, or money. That will rise her up as a person and not bring her down. A lot of the same advice she got from her mom is the same some girls are still getting today from their parents just maybe not as harsh.
Work Cited
Dutton, W. (1989). Merge and Separate: Jamaica Kincaid's Fiction. World Literature Today, 63(3), 406-410.
Kincaid, J. (2015). Girl. In Making Literature Matter (Sixth edition ed., pp. 49-50). Boston, MA: Bedford St. Martins. Smith, I. (2002). Misusing canonical intertexts: Jamaica Kincaid, Wordsworth and colonialism's" absent things". Callaloo, 25(3), 801-820.
