A Mother's Advice
Girl by Jamaica Kincaid:
A Mother’s Advice Girl, a short story by Jamaica Kincaid based on her thoughts from a woman’s words to her as she remembers. Words that in her younger years she just listens and hears but as she grew older , came out to be wise words from a mother that has experienced life. These wise words gave her a realization that her mother is giving her advices in the hope of her becoming a responsible and decent woman that everybody sees and gives her warnings so she could be aware of things around her and protect herself. In the old times, people thought that women who can do chores around the house are good and ideal woman. This is of the thinking that women are only good enough in the household, again, in the old times. In the first passage of the paragraph this is how the writer stressed it by putting some of the chores as her opening like “Wash the clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; Wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them in the clothesline to dry”(Kincaid 47). Literally , we may see it as it is and just a plain everyday chore that has to be done. Not in a mother’s word, it is not. For this mother teaching and showing her daughter doing chores is her way of teaching her responsibility. With those set days of the week, doing the laundry accordingly as she said assures her that by the rest of the week they have clean clothes to grab and wear from the closet. A woman is defined or judged how she is by the way she acts around people. As a mother, it is very hurtful and embarrassing for her daughter to be called names by anybody and be the center of every rumor. For this not to happen, she wants her daughter to look and act decently around people. Her mom tells her to be dressed appropriately in the line “this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming”(Kincaid 47). Also by acting properly around men in the line, “This is
A Mother’s Advice Girl, a short story by Jamaica Kincaid based on her thoughts from a woman’s words to her as she remembers. Words that in her younger years she just listens and hears but as she grew older , came out to be wise words from a mother that has experienced life. These wise words gave her a realization that her mother is giving her advices in the hope of her becoming a responsible and decent woman that everybody sees and gives her warnings so she could be aware of things around her and protect herself. In the old times, people thought that women who can do chores around the house are good and ideal woman. This is of the thinking that women are only good enough in the household, again, in the old times. In the first passage of the paragraph this is how the writer stressed it by putting some of the chores as her opening like “Wash the clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; Wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them in the clothesline to dry”(Kincaid 47). Literally , we may see it as it is and just a plain everyday chore that has to be done. Not in a mother’s word, it is not. For this mother teaching and showing her daughter doing chores is her way of teaching her responsibility. With those set days of the week, doing the laundry accordingly as she said assures her that by the rest of the week they have clean clothes to grab and wear from the closet. A woman is defined or judged how she is by the way she acts around people. As a mother, it is very hurtful and embarrassing for her daughter to be called names by anybody and be the center of every rumor. For this not to happen, she wants her daughter to look and act decently around people. Her mom tells her to be dressed appropriately in the line “this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming”(Kincaid 47). Also by acting properly around men in the line, “This is