“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid features a list of actions and experiences, rather than having a distinct dialogue. This list contains fragments of advice given by a mother to a daughter. Intertwined within the non-stop flow of advice, there are italicized points that represent the daughter’s responses. The mother’s statements mainly focus on the experience of being a girl (hence, the title), but they range from common advice to insanely specific ideals.
I would rename this story to “Things I Wish I Knew.” I interpreted this piece as a collection of the mother’s memories, having each piece of advice she gave coming from her own experiences. It reminded me of those videos or speeches where someone tells you everything they wish they knew sooner so you won’t make their mistakes. Something similar to this would explain the alternating between intensities of the mother’s advice, such as the contrast between “how you set a table for lunch” to “how to love a man.”
A good example of her more intense advice is when she uses repetition within her statements - she begins with “this is how to make good medicine for a cold.” In the next sentence, she follows up with, “this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child.” Here, it could be implied that she’s talking about how to force a miscarriage; even though it is phrased with the same first few words as the previous sentence, it is starkly different. Making medicine for a cold is basic life knowledge that everyone can utilize. On the other hand, making medicine to get rid of a child is very specific to womanhood, and even then, it is something a little questionable to say to a young girl with no context.
The same goes for the mother’s constant return to the concept of “being a slut.” She gives another string of advice: “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 ...” The first clause is a common teaching - common etiquette among strangers. However, the mother twists the meaning and makes it more grim. She was not just teaching her how to be presentable, rather, how to not be a slut.
The way she is able to give such bold advice to her young daughter gives the story an uneasy tone. Despite this, I don’t think the mother is meant to be seen as a horrible person in this story. No matter the context, she is still giving advice. And looking at her specific examples, you can argue that they prove her mother’s vulnerability. I believe she is in tune with the struggles of her past and rather than moving past them, pretending that they were never a part of her, she decides to tell her daughter about them. This is her way of protecting her daughter, making sure that she does not have to be lost when put in the same horrible circumstances that she was once in.
“Girl” did not feature a completely misogynistic mother forcing unnecessary information upon her daughter. Rather, it was a mother doing a reminiscence of her own life, slowly remembering the struggles of her past and sharing with her daughter the bits of knowledge she was forced to pick up along the way - these are the things she wishes she knew.
