Antigua Girl

Women have been oppressed by those of the opposite sex for years, which has led us to where we are today. “Girl” seems to have been written during a time period when women were looked down upon and had to act a certain way in order to maintain a good image. A little back story on the author allows you to see the point of view from which this short story was written. “Girl” was published to bring Antigua’s rich history to light where the author experienced what is was like to be a female in a poor country and what was expected of her on a daily basis, simply because she was female. The way the short story is structured is in an extremely precise way, almost in sentence format but with commas instead of periods. For example, “this is how you set table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch” (Girl, online). The structure of the story shows the way women were supposed to live their lives in Antigua. They had to be done in a certain way when this short story was written and how it affected the lives of the women of Antigua.
Throughout the story, the young girl is taught how to wash and dry clothes, how to sew and iron, how to set the table for various occasions, among other things like not singing benna in a church. Back then, benna was a form of scandalous music which was forbidden in churches, and if the girls were caught singing it in church they would get in a lot of trouble. An example of benna is “Maude smell donkey, she smell so funky/ Me gee she water, me gee she soap/ And she still smell funky!” (Shmoop Editorial Team,