MLA Research Paper The short story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid maintains a lot of value to women and their culture. The short story is about a young girl being raised by her mother into the woman her mother wants her to be. The girls mother comes off incredibly strict with very little affection in her long list of demands and responsibilities this young girl is supposed to carry out. The mother is attempting to teach her daughter proper cultural actions and the proper social, ladylike behavior she is supposed to withhold while growing up. Although the mother was strict, she only wants the best for her daughter.
The mother behaves stern while teaching her daughter these things only because she wants to sort of eliminate any chance of her daughter possibly becoming what she always feared, and that is a misbehaved, unappreciated and promiscuous young woman. The young girl has a lot of things to learn such as table manners, house cleaning, Sunday school manners, medicinal responsibilities, abortion, and love(Kincaid). These are a few examples of the long and continuous demands she must learn from her mother. Among these responsibilities and demands, it is quite the educational load to handle for such a young girl. In this day and age, most of these things are expected from a normal woman and are considered natural especially for traits in marriage. If these were the norm back then and they are currently the norm, then maybe people have been raising their young children strict like the mother in this story and in no way is that a bad thing.
When people are looking to get married, they normally look for traits such as a good housewife or proper care of children and knowing how to be independent or in charge. Nowadays, all of these traits are expected and naturally known in all women because of such upbringings like this. This way to raise a child has become a tradition in most women’s lives. So maybe the mother may have been strict and did not seem so affectionate, but she was intelligent in how she was so demanding of her daughter. The daughter never spoke back, acted out, or misbehaved towards her mother. Needless to say, this mother ran a strict