Jamaica Kincaid has depicted problematic mother-daughter relationships extensively throughout her work, but her 1978 short story "Girl", from his first collection of short stories At the Bottom of the River remains his most succinct representation of this theme. Her difficult relationship with her mother, Annie Richardson, no doubt fueled Kincaid's concern for mothers, daughters, and their often contentious bonds. Kincaid admits of her mother, "[T]he way I became a writer was that my mother wrote my life for me and told it to me. I can't help but think that it got me interested in the idea of ​​myself as an object" (qtd. in Kenney 6). Thus, the maternal figure in "Girl" is probably a fictionalized representation of Kincaid's mother. Like most part of Kincaid's work, "Girl" addresses the acculturating influence of mothers on their daughters in this sense, "Girl" seems like a story of helplessness However, if one assumes that the narrator of the story represents Kincaid's mother, nature the subversive nature of “Girl” becomes evident. Kincaid emancipates herself from her mother's tyranny by co-opting her voice and diverting it from its original purpose, which was initially intended as a tool of acculturation and colonization, becoming, in Kincaid's hands, a nuanced but unshakable critique. of those same practices.In this sense, “Girl” is ultimately a story of empowerment. Get an Original EssayA continuous monologue from the point of view of an unnamed narrator, presumably the mother of the titular girl, Kincaid's "The Girl" consists superficially of a stream of imperatives concerning domestic life. At first the mother's commands seem harmless: «Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the pile of stones; Tuesday wash your colored clothes and put them to dry on the clothesline; do not walk bareheaded in the scorching sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil” (306). In this way, says critic Diane Simmons, “'Girl' can be read as a kind of introduction to the manipulative art of rhythm and repetition. The story begins with the mother's voice giving […] simple, benevolent and appropriately maternal advice” (467). The reader, like the girl, “is lulled and attracted by the song of the mother's admonitions” (468). However, as the narrative progresses, the mother's advice becomes more and more disconcerting, particularly her advice on “how to bully a man” and “how a man bullies you” (Kincaid 307), as well as his instructions, “[T]his is like making good medicine to throw away a baby before it even becomes a baby” (307), which involves a self-induced abortion. Meanwhile, the girl herself is notably silent, except for two italicized protest sentences, and her timid attempts at self-defense go unrecognized by her mother, who, as it gradually becomes apparent, is consumed by a single goal: to prevent her daughter from becoming “the slut that [she] is so determined to become” (306). Many of the mother's most questionable injunctions are directly related to sex. According to critic J. Brooks Bouson, "[T]he unnamed mother in 'Girl' admonishes her daughter to be a good, dutiful daughter and to follow her mother's and society's rules of proper behavior so that she does not become the 'slut ' that her mother repeatedly accuses her of being 'so determined to become'" (25). The mother's speech simultaneously limits and controls her daughter's sexual inclinations: "[O]n Sunday she tries to walk like a lady and not like the whore you want so badly to become […] You don't have to talk to iguys from the pier, not even to give directions; don't eat fruit on the street: the flies will follow you” (Kincaid 306). Although the girl's age is unclear, the mother's reminder to "dip your little cloths right after you take them off" (306) suggests that the girl has at least begun menstruating. Thus, the implications of the mother's monologue are clear: the entire story, in essence, becomes a thinly veiled treatise on how to navigate the potentially dangerous world of sexual adulthood. Bouson further argues, “The mother's message is that the daughter should be a good and respectful girl and should not bring shame to her family” (25). Shame, in this particular context, is omnipresent. For the mother, even the simple act of buying bread can be complicated by the woman's sexual history. When the girl asks, "[But] what if the baker doesn't let me taste the bread?" the mother replies, "[Do] you mean that after all you will really be the kind of woman the baker won't let near the bread?" (Kincaid 307). Shame, therefore, becomes both a crucial element of control in the mother's speech and a regulating force in the girl's life. In addition to circumscribing the girl's sexuality, the mother's speech also reinforces traditional gender roles. “So you iron your father's khaki shirt so that it doesn't have a crease,” the mother says, and “so you iron your father's khaki pants so that it doesn't have a crease” (306-307 ). In this case, the mother implies that a woman's job is to take care of the men in her life, even in the most mundane details. Likewise, the mother dictates how a respectable girl should behave, especially if an eligible bachelor is present: “So you smile at someone you don't like too much; this is how you smile at someone you don't like at all; that's how you smile at someone who doesn't smile completely” (307). The message is clear: a girl must always be outwardly affable and pleasant, even towards people she hates. Herself originally from a former British colony, Kincaid tacitly invokes a comparison between her mother's dominant voice and colonial discourse. Just like the mother in “Girl,” “the colonial system, pretending to raise the child, actually steals her from itself (Simmons 466). And just like Kincaid's mother, the colonial tradition writes the lives of its subjects for them through the implementation of metanarratives, or general accounts or interpretations of events and circumstances, which provide a model or structure for people's beliefs and give meaning to their experiences. The rhetoric of “Girl” comprises a kind of metanarrative in itself, in which young women dedicate their lives to cultivating the domestic sphere, maintain a façade of asexuality for the sake of public approval, quietly abort children they don't want, and certainly “don't sing benna in Sunday school” (Kincaid 307). Kincaid, however, combats the metanarrative of the mother, and therefore the colonizer, through writing. Bouson states, “If her mother's internalized voice is a powerful force in the development of Kincaid's writing, Kincaid also believes that her writing is an effective way of responding to her mother, allowing her to have the final say in her internal dispute in ran with her. mother” (26). In this case Kincaid gets “the last word” through the usurpation of the mother's voice. After all, “Girl” is ultimately Kincaid's story, not her mother's. Viewed through this lens, what on the surface appears to be a litany of instructions designed to indoctrinate and acculturate the girl becomes an ironic critique of the mother's rhetorical purpose. As Bouson argues, “[I]n capturing controlling and assertive speech. 2017.