"Girl"

          In the short story Girl written by Jamaica Kincaid, the speaker is telling the girl what she should do and how to do it. Girl can by analyzed in the Feminist perspective because the speaker is teaching the girl how to do everything the "right" way. The girl is learning right from wrong on how to do chores and how to behave. She is learning simple things like "how you sweep a corner" or "how you set a table"(2). Between all of the chores and manners the speaker throws in about becoming a slut "on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming" (2). After this line the speaker keeps adding in on how she can prevent herself from turning into one.
          The style, tone, and setting really completes what the author wanted to tell us. The style of Girl is written as a long list. Every line is what she has to follow each day in order to be a respectful lady. The tone is very serious and demanding. An example would be the author always using "this is how you..."(2). The repetition of this is used because the speaker is trying to get his point across. The setting may be set in 1978, when it was written or it could be set in the years before. The line the stands out to prove it was set around this time is "when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse..." (2). This line tells the reader that it must be set in a time where women still made their own clothes. So this gives us a hint that it is set around 1978. Another quote that proves this is "this is how you hem a dress when you see the hem coming down to prevent yourself from looking like the slut you are so bent on becoming." (2) Women were not allowed to wear short dresses back in that time period. They always covered their legs and chest unlike how women dress now. The term "slut" is still used now but before it was a really bad insult. While women had to cover their bodies during earlier times; now women have the freedom to dress in what they want knowing that they might be called a slut.
         This story shows us that women were expected to do everything on this "list". They had a profile to maintain because it was expected of them. Jamaica Kincaid wrote this in a way to show that women were told to do many things in a certain way. When reading this the speaker tells this girl how to cook, clean, buy cloth, eat, smile, set the table, and not be a slut. If women follow all these rules they will become a proper women that civilization expects them to be.