When I actually sat down and thought about it, Girl by Jamaica Kincaid is kind of a sad short shory.
The narration style is coming from her "boss"/ the family that she works for (since she is an Au Pair). You can tell that, that is the narrator because of the way he is talking to her, and what he is saying to her. You can almost kind of hear the way he is saying it too. I call the narrator "he" because he describes girls to be very derogative; he uses the word "slut", which today is a very hurtful word to some people. He does not really seem to care about what she has to say because every time she asks a question, he completely disreguards what she says.
"Girl" presents females as being inferior. When you see how the boss talks to her, and what he says to her, its almost like she is a slave. He basically tells her every thing she has to do with out taking a single break, and not answering, or paying attention to any of her questions or concerns. He portrays girls as "sluts" which is a very dirty word, and offensive to most women. Through out the story, he tells her how to conduct herself. By the boss telling her this, he thinks that she does not know how to do it herself. The end of the story suprises me because, through out the story he tells her not to conduct herself in an unpolite manner, and then at the end when she asks a simple question he automatically assumes she is a bad person.
This is a really great post! I agree with you 100%, I portrayed the story very similar to what you said in your blog.
ReplyDeleteBe careful you don't fuse the writer with the character. While the story is based on Kincaid's experiences, she is not the woman in the story, and the story has no nanny. The story does have a "boss" figure, and through context, that boss figure emerges as a mother. This is a story about women, so instead of thinking about "he," think of it in terms of "she."
ReplyDeleteI know, I actually understand it alot more, and have a whole other opinion on this story now that we discussed it in class.
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