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This week we will explore Gender Criticism.
Begin by reading Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl.”
You can listen to author reading the story at the Bedford St. Martin’s VirtuaLit website.
Essentially, this story is a long list of commands meant to instruct
a girl in how to do laundry, set a table, keep clean, clean a house,
iron, smile, self medicate, manage money, and buy bread among other things.
If we look at this through the lens of gender criticism, we need begin
by establishing a basic premise:
Traditionally, literature has been written and read by men.
Gender criticism was originally known as feminist criticism
because it focused on the fact that women did not have a voice in literature.
Now, gender critics acknowledge that gender greatly affects
both authors and readers whether they are male or female,
so the question has been generalized a bit.
How does the author’s, reader’s, or intended reader’s
gender affect the text?
Let’s apply this to the story.
The two main characters in the story are an older woman,
probably the mother, and a young girl, probably her daughter.
The mother’s role is to teach the girl what is expected of her as a woman.
She upholds and reinforces the cultural roles.
The daughter, who we only see through a few questions throughout
the story, is trying to learn the roles by also strains against them.
So what is the mother really teaching?
She makes it clear that the role of women involves serving
her husband and family, being proper and pure, and knowing
how to fix a situation if you are not proper and pure.
This is a passive role, reacting to the needs of the patriarchal culture.
What’s interesting, though, is that the rules are not being dictated by a man.
Instead, the “rules” are perpetuated by women—mother to daughter.
One way to deduce the author’s purpose is to consider the
intended audience for the story. In different contexts,
the story could have widely different goals.
If men are the intended audience, the author may be trying
to give a different perspective or show what it’s like to grow up as a girl.
It could also be a more socially-minded story intended to expose
inequality between the genders.
If women are the intended audience, the author could be trying
to capture a moment of growing up or becoming a woman.
This could inspire a feeling of connectedness between the author and reader.
Or the author could be pointing out the inequalities women face in order
to spur readers to action in their own lives.
In general, gender criticism asks us to pay attention to the ways
in which gender affects us and our world. Often, gender criticism
is used with cultural or historical criticism to produce a more complete
analysis of the effect these roles have on characters, authors, and readers.