The Theme Of Female Sexuality In Jamaica Kincaid's Girl

Has a parent ever been away on business? How did the house feel with out with? Lonely maybe even isolated. Did the remaining parent tried to bond with you? How did that feel? Probably awkward. In the stories Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes and Confetti Girl by Diana López this was the case. The main characters of each story have to deal with only having one parent. There are so used to the life that they have that they can’t adjust to the one that they presently have. This caused many issues. Though this seems like a tension filled prison for the character there really is something that the could do to solve the tension. In the two stories, Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes and Confetti Girl Diana López, the main characters and their parents

The significance of Kincaid’s title “The Estrangement” is to describe her deteriorating relationship with her mother. In the story, Kincaid explains how she stopped talking to her mother a few years before she died because she always made her feel like her accomplishments weren't good enough. Estrangement is the fact of no longer being on friendly terms or part of a social group and during the story Kincaid looked at her mother as a hero; but eventually developed resentment.For example, in the first sentence of the essay Kincaid said “ three years before my mother died, I decided not to speak to her again”.

Can you imagine life living with a single parent? In the stories “Confetti Girl” and “Tortilla Sun, “ show how your parents can possibly act and treat you when they are single. In the experts from Confetti Girl and Tortilla Sun tension is caused by the different point of view between the parents and children.

This passage is from the book Cinderella Ate My Daughter, by Peggy Orenstein. The overall purpose of this book is to inform the readers of the stereotypes girls must face as adolescents. The author is able to express her opinion as a parent and give advice to other parents with daughters of how to overcome the stereotypes so girls do not succumb to the girly culture that bombards the media. The book touches on Orenstein’s role as a mother to her daughter Daisy and the challenges she faces due to all the stereotypes for young girls. This passage focuses on girls conforming to the stereotype regarding pink is the color for females.

Despite being used as props and blamed for their own exploitation, the heroines each manage to reclaim their sexualities from the men in their lives. After Jody’s death in Their Eyes, Janie rebels against her Nanny’s and Jody’s oppression, saying “Ah done lived by Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine” (114). Through her relationship with Tea Cake, she embraces the sexuality that has been repressed her entire life. Soon Hyo similarly reclaims her identity through her decision to no longer let Rick, or other men, take advantage of her; she shouts, “I will never, never again lay down for any man” (195). Helga also, in rejecting Axel Olsen’s offer of marriage rejects her supposed nature as a black woman. She tells him, “I’m not for sale. Not to you. Not to any white man. I don’t at all care to be owned. Even by you” (89). Although McDowell claims that women writers lash out against the stereotype of the hypersexualized female by deliberately desexualizing their characters, this is not exactly the case. Like Helga says, women’s sexuality cannot be bought or sold, only manipulated by those in power. The intersection of these three portrayals speaks to the volume of types of sexuality women possess. Rather than lash out against this stereotype, as McDowell claims, by deliberately desexualizing woman characters, these novels prove that by eliminating the dichotomy of innocence and sensuality through varied portrayals of women, you strike the stereotype at the root, blocking the male influence from contaminating the sexuality any

A wise woman once said, "The more a daughter knows about her mother 's life, the stronger the daughter" (http://www.wiseoldsayings.com/mother-and-daughter-quotes/). As any girl raised by their mother can attest, the relationship between a mother and her daughter is a learning experience. As young girls, you look up to you mother as your greatest role model and follow in their steps closely. In Jamaica Kincaid 's short story "Girl", a mother uses one single sentence in order to give her daughter motherly advice. Her advice is intended to help her daughter, but also to scold her at the same time. This mother is strong believer in domestic knowledge and believes that through this wisdom her daughter will be spared from a life of promiscuity or being, in her words, a "slut". Most importantly, it allows readers to see the detrimental measures of gender roles that are brought upon young girls just coming into womanhood. It is through the understood setting, constructive

Jamaica Kincaid writes “girl” A story or poem that is something like a lecture from a mother figure to a daughter figure. There is an enormous amount of ways to present the tone. The tone of “Girl” is loving, caring, but strict. Jamaica uses literary devices to achieve the tone. She uses characters, setting, plot, point of view and style to establish a tone. Tone us pretty much an overall feeling of the story. When you start to break down tone into feelings, you can see how you could manipulate it to express your feelings. Jamaica Kincaid chose to attack loving by the fact that the lecture is advice on life. Ms. Kincaid attacks caring by telling her what not to do. The author attacks strict by not letting her speak very much. She also portrays how she strict she is through her intense use of detail when speaking.

The book, Bad Feminist, written by Roxane Gay, is a collection of essays that argues about many topics of feminism and typical problems in today’s society. “What We Hunger For," is one of her personal essays. Gay reveals to her reader the difficult journey she had to endure as a teen, while also taking her reader through the cultural experiences that many girls endure but never talk about. She later explores The Hunger Games trilogy and its heroine Katniss Everdeen to emphasize the cathartic and sobering stories in young adult literature. Gay claims that through the use of young adult literature and movies that speak of true experiences and accomplishments, the dark past young adult endure can be unlock and resolved. Gay appeals to ethos, logos

In the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, most of the women are all unhappy and want to change their lives. On page 11, it states after Esperanza’s grandmother got married, “ She looked out the window her whole life.” This shows that after she had gotten married, she was unhappy with how her life was. This also shows that she loved her life much more before she had gotten married. On page 27 it states “Is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life.” This reveals that she is unhappy with how her life currently is. This also reveals that she is waiting a man to fall in love with and save her from how her life is. In the short book the girls are sad with how they choose to live their lives.

Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” is a very interesting story. In short it is about an unspecified guardian giving life advice to a young girl; the range of this advice varies from dress and grooming to medicinal recipes. The older woman, also referred to as the “guardian”, is not censored about this advice either. While people may think that “Girl” is a minor tale of verbal abuse, I prefer to think of it as story of tough love as well as hope that the girl will do better in life then the adult.

As a girl today, I am well aware of the adversities for women in the world. Inequalities in our society are undeniable, but we focus on our own lives rather than women’s lives in the horrific world of human trafficking. The novel Sold by Patricia McCormick explores this terrible world and its implications. McCormick has experience with this world through extensive research and time spent among third world country red light districts. Reading this text, I began to think about gender and its large role on society. More specifically, gender’s role on women and their positions in the world. Being a young woman, I fall into the intended audience of the book. The rhetoric in the book appeals to the young girls around the same age of the main character

“Girl” is a short story that teaches that there are many lessons we learn throughout life from parents, or in this case, a single parent. The narrator in this short story is not clearly stated, but, based on the details given, the narrator is a mother who is speaking to her daughter. The parental figure is attempting to teach the child about how a girl/woman should act based on her own beliefs and experiences. The mother is a firm believer in gender roles based on the context; one can assume this is because of the time period that the mother

In the story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid illustrates the talk given to a young Antiguan girl about what is expected of her in order to make a point about the cultural pressures and unfair social boundaries that come with being a girl in the Caribbean. The author plays with word choice and sentence structure in a way that makes this unconventional writing style enjoyable and metaphorically resonant. Though it is possible to read this prose as a mother talking directly to her daughter and the daughter interjecting, it is actually indicative of a larger conversation between a Caribbean society and its young women; this can be most clearly seen in the discussion of Benna, of plant, animal, and human life, of promiscuity, and of manners.

The phrase "like a girl" has become an expression that invokes an idea of weakness, femininity, and limitations. Lauren Greenfield partnered with Always, a company that makes feminine products for women, in order to express their belief that "like a girl" is a useless phrase that holds no real meaning. Most girls struggle through the awkward stage of puberty. During this time, a girl’s confidence plummets; this has often lead to an increasing amount of girls quitting sports, even if these sports provide a sense of happiness and belonging. These adolescent girls going through puberty need the help and guidance of their elders to help them raise their self-confidence and to keep them engaged in the activities they love. Always reaches out to

This chapter provides a review of available literature on social issues in To the Lighthouse. The basic focus is on the social issues related to every character in the novel. Issues like feminism, marriages, death, vision, religious doubts, optimism, pessimism, materialism etc. The relative work is connected to the objectives of the study. Mrs. Ramsay uniting family, and Charles Tansley religious doubts and degrading women, and Lily’s painting, similarly the marriages of Victorian and Modern Age through the characters of To the Lighthouse, and at the end how they all deal and respond to all these different social issues.