Jamaica Kincaid's Girl

Throughout the short story “Girl,” Jamaica Kincaid tells a story about a mother giving her daughter advice about growing up through a series of semicolons and run on sentences within a single paragraph. This technique Kincaid uses through the course of her short story is quite an unusual approach to the reader at first. Usually, short stories consist of completely structured sentences and multiple paragraphs. Although Kincaid’s structure in “Girl” is constructed in an untraditional manner, it plays an important role in describing a mother’s responsibility of teaching their daughter life lessons essential to adulthood as a woman. The advice the mother gives her daughter is quite abundant and clearly wasn’t taught in a single session, but
instead over a wide range of time. The mother’s advice is present throughout the entirety of “Girl” with the exception when the daughter states her opinion about some of the lessons. For this reason, Kincaid continuously uses semicolons and run on sentences in a single paragraph. She wants to show the reader the ongoing process of mothers giving their daughters advice in which evolves over time. For an example, at the beginning of the short story, the advice the mother presents to her daughter consists of straightforward advice normally given to children such as behaving in Sunday school by not singing benna. However, as the story comes toward the end, the mother presents her daughter with advice progresses meant to be heard by incoming female adults such as how women present themselves in front of men. All in all “Girl” is meant to inform the reader of all the work it takes to raise and prepare a young woman for adulthood. Kincaid’s short story is centered around on this idea which is why it’s displayed in a single but long paragraph. She structures her story in this manner to stress the importance of the hard work and responsibilities mothers have while raising their daughters to prepare them for womanhood.