Having fun with "Girl"

One of the learning outcomes for Intro to Literature is "students will learn to offer radical interpretations of literature." What can be more radical than magic, and what can be a more appropriate topic as we end the month of October and head into November? We're in full harvest mode.

Before I give my take (actually one of many takes) on Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl," I'd like to play a little with Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" and Penny Marshall's "Riding in Cars with Boys"--our other two texts. In my last post, I spoke a little about the title of Marshall's film. I am intrigued by the oversimplification of the sexual act that initiates reproduction. The film could have been called Teenagers Having Sex, but this would have been way too explicit I guess even in this time, and some would say there would be no art in that title. I disagree. This alternative title is on a scale more realistic than that which the film's producers chose, one that, perhaps appropriate to the time--the late '60s--still maybe held on to Victorian understatement. Girls (not women) got pregnant not from having sex but from riding in cars with boys. This representation of female sexuality on the surface would seem to preference the male role in the sex act to that of the female since being with boys suggests that the boys are doing something to the girls that results in pregnancy. Or, I suppose one could also argue that the girls do something to the boys. The girls are doing the riding; the boys the driving? In either case, "Riding in Cars" is partly a story about female power and women's choices, and though this title seems to cast girls as passive victims, this way of locating women in the passenger seat doesn't necessarily negate their power. Never do we see Bev literally in the driver's seat, but the question is whether--behind what appears to be--she is in fact the one in control of her life. Put another way, the question both for this film, for the "Story of an Hour," and for "Girl" is whether beyond the surface of things exists a dynamic women's space and women's power.

As one who studies temporal (time) constructions, I have enjoyed thinking about the concept of time in Chopin's short story. Time for me is not absolute or fixed but constructed (built) and regulated (measured) and mechanized. Chopin returns to her character Louise Mallard an organic time, maybe even a feminine sense of time. The story of an hour is a very brief narrative in which Mrs. Mallard transcends earthly time that has come to be controlled by man, or by men like her husband who, working in offices, govern themselves by the clock and by a temporal order that has its origin in the movement of trains. Mr. Mallard's own false death was thought to be by train accident, and it is this crisis that frees his wife from earthly time, from the life she has with him that is governed by this order. Chopin flirts maybe with the idea that he too could have been freed from regulated time, but alas he is not dead but his wife is. Clearly, the universe opens or shows itself to Mrs. Mallard, who has re-entered a celestial order in the crack in time that was the suspension of the human-regulated. This crack in temporal order is fascinating, and it suggests to me an opening to an alternative space in which those whose lives are not entirely beholden to the clock--and the life of the clock--may find their freedom and not only that but alternative ways of being. Mrs. Mallard, who becomes Louise again--is victorious because she has transcended this tyranny. What she accomplishes either through literal death of the body or through figurative death of regulated time, Bev accomplishes in becoming a real actor within her own space.

Finally, "Girl." What does its title suggest? Eternal childhood? Upon first reading, one is overwhelmed maybe by the seeming lack of power between this mother and daughter, and this would be an accurate reading given strained relations between the author and her own mother. But, on second thought, perhaps girl is a suggestion of sisterhood, an indication of unity. In other words, maybe the connotation of girl is much more messy than it seems. From the lips of the overbearing mother, it sounds spirit-killing. Is she not training her daughter to be a robot? What spirit could survive such a mechanical life in which washing of white clothes must always be done on Mondays; washing of colored clothes on Tuesdays. Mother would seem to have this routine down to a science. Many women do. Is this order organic, or imposed? Does it mimic or is it informed by some other order, for instance, that learned on a plantation, or is it "natural"? Is this a natural, women's rhythm? Or, is it influenced by both, which would mean that Mother has found her liberty in appropriating an unnatural order and mixing it with other ways?

This tight text certainly seems to leave no room for freedom either for Mother or for Girl, yet, as with our two other texts, maybe that is where power resides because it is so well hidden. The first order of business when living in a colonial state is survival; the second is discovery of one's own organic power. Deeply embedded for instance in Kincaid's short story (or prose poem) is the instruction--"this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard." Is Kincaid via Mother not telling her readers how to expand their power? And what of this act of sweeping? Is this cleaning, working, fixing? These are magical terms, in addition to being ordinary, every day terms. Kincaid indicates a relationship between the woman actor cleaning and organizing her assigned outer spaces to gaining power over her inner spaces, from corner to yard. One who sweeps at once declutters her own mind and, very actively, removes from her life those things she doesn't desire to have control over her inner life.

At the end of the story, Girl appears completely deflated. She has not learned Mother's lessons. She has not learned the power of woman which her mother has passed on so secretly, so tightly. But, we trust that she will. By all appearances, she will be controlled, but Mother knows that she will be in control--if she has listened well--of herself.