Petra Delarocha
Joel Bettridge
Ways of Knowing
12 May 2008
“Girl”: Critical Reading
At first glance, Jamaica Kincaid's “Girl” appears to be just a series of orders or instructions given from someone to... well, a girl. It is written as one solid run-on sentence that spans about a page and a half. While a first reading gives the impression of a mother explaining chores and social concepts to her daughter, a closer inspection reveals that said “Girl” is the only character present.
In reality, it would be perfectly acceptable for the guardian of a girl to preach the ways of the world to her so that she may live easily and have what may at once seem like chores become habits. When beginning “Girl” it seems like this is the motive of the first consciousness appears to be doing. “Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap;” It is immediately evident from this first passage and from the next few that this is a list of chores. While it is conceivable that someone may tell her daughter when and how to do her daily chores, it is not common that the list would be told in such a way with no other dialogue present. “wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; Don't walk barehead in the hot sun;” Two entirely different orders in sequence like this would not ordinarily be coherent in a normal conversation.
Also, In most literature, quotations are used to portray the speaking aloud of a character in the text. The quotations are most often followed by the name of a character, signifying who is speaking, followed by an adjective describing in what manner they were speaking. “Girl” has no quotation or any names that would imply characters and so it is not evident that there is anyone talking... at all. However we know that there must be SOME character because the text references to activities and people in the direction of one person. This person has a father. This person attends Sunday school. Evidently there is a person in this story. I will from here on out refer to her as “Girl”; She is the only character in this story.
Because the story does not give us a setting to put “Girl” in or any context at all, we, as readers, are put in a position where we must assume that context is irrelevant and that the “monologue” is the entire context they will need. However, it is written as a list, not a speech or a dialogue. It is what a stream of consciousness would look like if “Girl” wrote her thoughts down as they came to her. This is a reason why no punctuation (like quotations) is really necessary; When one writes a list, it appears to be one long sentence (usually separated into pieces, in this case using semicolons). When read this way, the story stops being one person speaking to another and becomes more like a shopping list, a list of things to do, or a list of things to think. And so, our initial motive to have a character standing in as a mother is no longer needed. “Girl” is the only character here and we are reading her thoughts in the order that they surface. “Girl” is thinking to her herself.
The average list for a week, say, would have a number of chores (“Wash the white clothes on Monday...”) that you would need to complete by whenever your week ends. “Girl” begins with two chores on the to-do list: “Wash the white clothes on Monday...; wash the color clothes on Tuesday...” It is not unlikely that while writing out a to-do list, one would think to themselves also about what not to do. This is exactly where “Girl” takes us next. “don't walk barehead in the hot sun;” “Girl” must be in an environment where it is sunny because the to-do list has hanging clothes on a clothesline as a chore. (You can't dry your clothes in the rain) So, directly after adding this, it would be only reasonable to for “Girl” to remember that she should wear a hat in the sun. This only adds to the stream of consciousness aspect of “Girl” as the listing of one activity leads into another relevant and related activity. It is the same as when someone remembers that one action will require another. The thought of hanging clothes prompts the memory of bareheadedness in the sun just as the thought of doing laundry might prompt one to remember to get their dollars turned into quarters for the machine.
An unfortunate side effect of thought pattern and memory is that when there is one overwhelming thought, it will poke its way into any list of thoughts and disrupt the pattern. “on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut 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;” “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?” All of these passages are seemingly random and disruptive in the text. There is no reference to any reason why “Girl” should be considered a slut and so we, as readers, are surprised by this sudden turn of emotion and negative behaviour. Keeping in mind that there is no one but “Girl” speaking/thinking, there are a few reasons why intrusive thought might appear this way. Evidently, she is upset about the nature of this word (slut) and by using it, she is putting herself down. It could have been that someone called her a slut. Maybe on Sunday when they thought she wasn't walking lady-like enough. It could be that she saw someone else be called a slut and is afraid of becoming one herself. We have no history of the events preceding this series of thoughts so we cannot know what caused this sudden insecurity in “Girl”s mind. In any case, she is afraid of becoming one and thus uses the term on herself so she can stay aware of what consequences will arise if she should ever become one.
It is common for insecurities to surface this way especially in young females. Every other thought of someone insecure about weight will remind them that they must go the extra mile to stay thin. “Girl” goes the extra mile to remind herself that if she does not behave in such a way she will become a “slut”. She knows, however, that she has not behaved in such a way that she should be considered as such. This is why a single conflicting voice appears in the text. “but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school;” Here we can see that “Girl” is reassuring herself. The singing of “benna” in Sunday school is the thought following the first time “Girl” calls herself a slut. So we now know that singing benna in Sunday school must be related to unlady-like actions. But “Girl” tells herself that she doesn't do this and goes on to think about other things. Her voice of reason has authority here.
This insecurity of becoming a slut is a heavy one and comes up twice more in the story. You'll notice that the “presence of men” is important to take into account. The first mentioning of being a slut is followed by the singing of benna but then the mentioning of boys. The second is proceeded by the presence of men and the third is followed by the mentioning of “the baker” who presumably is a man. “Girl” feels that when around men, she must behave well or else she will be considered a slut and enforces the idea by using the word to scare herself. When her thoughts are interrupted once more by the voice of reason asks “but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?;” and in this case prompts her wandering thoughts to enforce the fact that she is not a 'slut' (“...the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread...”) but a lady who is trustworthy.
If there were more than one character present, “Girl” would have a very different response to being called a slut, especially if it was by a mother figure. It is evident that because there are no quotations, no names and the progression of subjects would be incoherent in a conversation between two people that there is no mother. However, we know that because the text is focused around a being who executes activities that there is at least one character. And it is because of the manner in which the text is laid out that we can understand it to be a series of thoughts. Only in this way does the run on sentence that is the story of “Girl” begin to take shape and become understandable.