In a poetic concatenation of lists and warnings intimated from a mother to her daughter, Jamaica Kincaid’s narrative prose “Girl” captures the up close transmission of ideals concerning femininity and womanhood passed down during the colonial era of Caribbean culture. The interpersonal aspect of the mother’s discursive lecture reveals rigid feminine ideals revolving around independence as manager and worker of the household, sexual modesty, and social decorum, all of which are equally weighted as important and portrayed as essential for the girl becoming a woman to be seen as a respectful one in community and society. Becoming a respectful woman entails a form of constant surveillance embodied in the form of the mother’s lengthy lecture given to the daughter, and with vague references to British colonial institutions, impacting the relationship between the daughter’s voice and body in relation to public and private spaces. The daughter recounts her mother’s perspective to show how they navigated ways of freedoms and protections within spaces through adhering to the aforementioned rigid gender roles.

In the middle of her lecture, the mother uses demonstratives to maintain her daughter’s attention and highlight specific domestic tasks she needs to fulfill as a girl becoming a woman. She instructs,

“this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard…this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; 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; this is how to catch a fish…”

The mother presents through repetitive demonstratives “this is how” to emphasize the tasks as not just urgent but fundamental as rites of passage in becoming and being a woman. Her very matter-of-fact tonal approach also shows it is normal and expected of females to do domestic work because these duties are part of tradition and culture. Being a woman is not just based on domesticity but upholding traditions within culture – being a Caribbean woman. She tells her daughter to make traditional Caribbean foods like pepper pot, doukona, and bread pudding. She caveats about growing food which shows how important her job is as homemaker because it can be dangerous even to fulfill basic survival and sustenance. The mother also shows how monumentous these household duties are as the girl must go from sweeping a corner to a whole house to a yard; the girl will have to control large amounts of physical spaces inside and outside the home that she is kind of like the master of her home. There is power, and therefore possibly freedom in these responsibilities, although it has to be done a particular way as her mother, and implicitly as other women since women, like her mother, have to ensure the girl learns these duties. The mother is being restrictive in that there is little room for the daughter to assert herself and make her own choices. There are risks to her- and her mother’s – reputation for not doing things correctly because a woman’s worth will be judged by her ability to keep a clean, well-ordered, functioning home. However, what is not a risk is concocting “good medicine” through knowledge of their natural environment to throw away a fetus. Women have the ability to control their fertility and reproductive system that they have control over their body and their family to a larger extent. The mother is endowing her daughter the ability to exercise some control over natural resources through use of plants for these medicines even while under colonial rule which can be seen as a form of resisting colonial oppression. On a micro-scale, it seems as though the mother has had many pregnancies and maybe they resulted from forbidden relationships with men.

In other disparate parts of the lecture, her mother uses her authority to criticize or rebuke the possibility of her daughter not adhering to the feminine ideals. She reiterates the phrase “like the slut you are bent on becoming” in different variations in three occasions: when she is telling her how to to walk like a lady, when she telling her how to hem a dress, and when she is around male strangers.

“…on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday school… this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming…this is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming…”

Her mother is delineating a dichotomy through contrasting a good, mother domesticated woman and a slut with warning that if her daughter does not follow these rules she will be deemed a slut. The language is so piercing and cold messaging to a daughter with using words like “bent” and “slut”, the first word kind of indicating that her daughter may already be on that horrible path or, according to the Google definition of “bent”, “determined to do” and has a “natural, strong inclination” to being a slut. “Bent” is defined as also deviating from normal or unusual, so there is a sense that if she does not fulfill the tasks her mother beset her with then she will be not normal and not accepted in society. As her lecture progresses, the changes within the variations of the phrase are important to note because her mother seems evermore convinced that her daughter has already done something wrong and the only way prevent ostracization is through performance. Social decorum of smiling, which she mentions prior to the line about behaving in front of male strangers, shows that women should conceal their feelings because they can be misconstrued as sexual. The three instances, examples of her behavior and her clothing, the way she moves her body being seen by others can be sexualized. The mother is commanding her daughter to restrict her sexuality or sexual feelings because there is no space for that in performing or geniunely following the traditional female roles facilitated for everyday life and work.

It seems random that she intercepts concern over her daughter singing benna during sunday school. It seems as though, additionally based on the way her daughter responds, someone else told her that she sang Benna in Sunday school. Benna – calypso genre of music where someone spreads gossips or says something sexual – Surveillance from the outside – best to surveil – warn inside the home – surveill your family – surveill yourself – am I teaching my daughter the things that she should be taught to act according to the world outside?  

The use of semicolons without stopping or ending in sentences denotes a sense of fear from the mother because she has maybe not followed all of these rules she is telling her daughter and has face the wrath of extreme consequences in society, as a result.