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Jamisha Lawton Professor Jacobs ENC1102 9 April 2014

Analyzing Jamaica Kincaids Girl through Biographical Criticism, Theme & Characterization Girl is a short story written by Jamaica Kincaid. It is a one sentenced dialogue between a mother and her daughter. The story starts off by stating the first of many demands or advice that the mother gives to her daughter to behave like a lady, take care of the household, and interact with men (Becnel 3). The mother is the main speaker in the story and the daughter only speaks twice. Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap (Mays 171) is the first demand in the story. The mothers goes on and on about how to not become the slut shes so bent on becoming. If you are familiar with Kincaid's work, you will know her work is unusual or difficult to understand. The majority of her work is based off of her life story. Jamaica Kincaids famous short story Girl can be analyzed through biographical criticism, theme and characterization. Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Porter Richardson in Antigua. For the first four years of her life she was an only child and like most only children, she received all the love and attention from her parents. That all changed when her mother had three other children, all boys, and she felt like her mother turned away from her (Milne 2). Kincaid started to act out in school and her

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mother actually removed her from school to help her take care of her brothers. Kincaid had every reason to feel as if her freedom was being taken away from her. By the time she was seventeen she had moved to New York. The feeling of resentment towards her mother and all the experiences Kincaid went through in life became the subjects of the majority of her work. Girl is the first short story that Kincaid wrote and had published in the New Yorker. Kincaids work has been criticized by many and According to Milne, although they believe her writing is very good and they do recommend it, they believe that her stories can be irritatingly difficult to read unless you let yourself go. In order to understand Kincaids work, you must know her biography or at least a little about her. The mother and daughter relationship is the theme of her short story Girl. The two main characters in the story, the mother and the girl, obviously dont have the typical American mother daughter relationship. The mother seems to be very hard on her daughter and the daughter seems as if she wants to prove to her mom that she is not going to turn out like the slut she believes she is on her way to becoming. The mother in the story basically wants her to understand that she is not a boy, and that because she is a woman, she has a lot to uphold; reputation was everything a woman had. As the girl in the story seems to still be young, the mother was trying to install these values into her at a young age before the girl started to steer off on the wrong path. But what if the baker wont let me feel the bread? You mean to say that after all you are going to be the kind of woman who the baker wont let near the bread? (Mays 171) is the last sentence in the story. The girl is the one who asked the question and the mother responds with what seems like shock because after all that she has taught her daughter about how to be a respectable woman, and not a slut, she may just turn out that way anyways.

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The mother in the short story treated her daughter as most Western Caribbean mothers would. The mother concerns life in making a lady out of her daughter, teaching her how to dress modestly, set a table for tea, show the proper respect based on the social class of ones guest, and maintain her sexual purity at all cost (Becnel 4) even though the mother was scolding her child you can see that she still cares about her because if she didnt why would she waste her time installing those values into her? Why would she be so concerned about how the girl turned out in life? The mother understands a womans place (Milne 4) and its her job to make sure her daughter understands it also. By the way she repeatedly used the word slut or said the slut youre so bent on becoming you can tell the mother thought of her daughter as that way because of her previous behavior, the mother is giving this advice because she feels as if she can keep the girl from going down the wrong path and help her become the respectable woman she wants her to be. The girl, who only speaks twice, is obviously still young and seems to have a lot of learning to do. Even though she only speaks twice, when she does speak her statements always start with But. But I dont sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school (Mays 171) is the response the girl gave her mother when she was told not to sing benna. Even though we do not know the girls true feelings, you can tell the girl is frustrated when she speaks because one she not only has to listen to what her mother is saying but she also has to learn it. What child would be excited about doing or learning the list of commands her mother is giving to her? The girl sees her mothers advice more as accusations that she will become a slut more than a warning. As said earlier, Kincaid was removed from school to take care of the house and her younger brothers. Throughout all of the advice that the mother gave to the girl, she never gave her any advice about school or how to better her life. All the advice given was a Constant cycle placed upon them to live (Bloom 179). The girl was basically taught to be equal to the woman

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around her and not as anything different, she was to be raised to want to grow and be ready to take care of house hold duties as Caribbean woman should. You can tell, by the advice that the mother is giving to the girl, that they live in a poor setting and that these commands are to help the girl with everyday life. Jamaica Kincaids writing usually always revolves around the same thing, the relationship of her and her mother. Kincaid has said I feel I would have no creative life or no real interest in art without my mother (Milne 4) meaning that if she hadnt went through what she went through with her mother that she would have no subject. The resentment that she had built up towards her mom seemed to help her find her voice in writing. You can tell that everything Kincaid went through with her mother affected her in some way, shape or form. Kincaid turned out to be nothing like her mother raised her to be, but better. Girl was written to show apart of how Kincaid was raised and how her mothers advice was a list of things to know how to perform and protect oneself from discrimination when she is under the proverbial watchful eye of this patriarchal community (Bailey 111). The relationship Kincaid had with her mother shows in all of her work, and no one sees that changing anytime soon.

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Work Cited Bailey, Carol. Performance and the Gendered Body in Jamaica Kincaids Girl and Oonya Kempadoos Buxton Spice. Merdians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. 2010: 106123. EBSCOhost. Web. 27 March.2014. Becnel, Kim. Literary Context in Short Stories Jamaica Kincaids Girl. Great Neck Publishing.2007. EBSCOhost. Web. 27 March.2014. Bloom, Harold. Jamaica Kincaid. New York: Info Base Publishing,2008.Print Mays, Kelly J. The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York: W.W Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. Print.

Milne, Ira Mark. Girl. Short Stories for Students. 2000: 85-98. Web. 27 March.2014.