Reading from a critical position

The short story Girl by Jamaica Kincaid raises a lot of questions towards our society and the on going debate about women’s rights and how women are raised. Due to Kincaid’s upbringing in a poor country and a complicated relationship with her mother we get to experience how it must have been for her to grow up as a young female under certain circumstances.

I read the female role in Kincaid’s short story as very simple and straight forward. I believe we read the comments and constructions that her mother used to tell her when Kincaid was just a young woman. The orders are mainly about how to clean, how to sew, how to cook and so forth. I can firmly hear the repetitive monologue of a mother talking to her daughter when reading these comments.

I conclude that in this household, a woman was supposed to know her place and had rarely any freedom of speech.

I personally can’t identify with this kind of upbringing. My mother was the first of her family to go to college to study Languages and History in Austria and my father the first one of his to study business. They were brought up in good families but not necessarily wealthy. They both worked hard and earned a lot of knowledge through their independence. My sister and I were taught how to help out in a household but even more how to be on our own feet and get the education we need in order to take care of our selves without needing a man to support us. There were never any differences between us sisters and our older brother. I know this is a great privilege and that this would not be possible for many young adults in a lot of families around the world. Let’s hope to see changes in the future, where anyone, no matter what race, gender or social status, can go and earn their knowledge and study in order to live an educated, intdependant life.