Women are supposed to be meek. Women are not meant to take up a lot of space and they are not meant to be loud. Women should eventually find husbands, preferably while they are young so they can conceive children early on. Women shouldn’t be sluts, they should always remain virginal. Of course, these ideals do not apply to men. These rigid and (protective?) ideas of what womanhood and femininity should look like are explored in Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” where we are witness to a culmination of things a mother has said to her daughter over her lifetime on how a woman should be.
The story does not have a traditional beginning, middle and end. It reads like a list, a guide of some sorts. Kincaid writes, “… always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach; 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; you musn’t speak…” As you can imagine, the list the mother gives her daughter continues on by telling what she should or shouldn’t do. The mother’s demands come across as frantic, repetitive and pesky. To the point that as a reader, I am left exhausted of all the ways a “real” woman should act.
The patriarchy ensures its survival by making sure that there are other women to keep women in check, to fall into place, to fall into line. The ideals that the mother imparts to her daughter aims to force into a tight box in hopes of finding validation and acceptance, primarily from men. Not being in your place as a woman means risking being ridiculed and shunned from the rest of society. With that being said, the mother’s past experiences have likely had an influence on the advice she gives her daughter because it is probably reminiscent to the advice she has received at some point in her life from her own mother. As I mentioned before, women have to be there to keep other women in check and this is ensured by generations of grandmothers, mothers and in turn daughters receiving advice that is intended to work as self preservation. This is why through the mother’s perspective, the advice is perhaps given as a way to protect her daughter. Maybe it is in the hopes of making men and women alike comfortable with a woman that tries her best to remain hidden, to remain small.
The mother’s fervent advice, through the daughters eyes can feel restrictive, or suffocating. Growing up means wanting to explore new things and discovering parts of yourself that you haven’t discovered before but that also means making mistakes along the way. With this growing list of the things you shouldn’t do as a woman, it will naturally feel repressive to a woman that wishes to find her place in the world. It may even create resentment towards the mother who perpetuates the vicious cycle of denying a woman of her agency and power. It is not only until the daughter takes an active role in breaking generational curses that she can liberate herself and potentially her future daughters from the same fate.
Work Cited
Kincaid, Jamaica. “‘Girl,’ by Jamaica Kincaid.” The New Yorker, 19 June 1978