Abstract
The paper intends to reread Jamaica Kincaid’s short story, ‘Girl’ (1978) and provide new insights into its understanding. It aims to analyse the poetic qualities, word choice, and structure of the text that are left not fully discussed by recent scholarship. The structure as well as the poetic language of ‘Girl’ make it an unconventional piece of writing falling between two literary categories and so hard to classify. ‘Girl’ apparently violates rules and transgresses conventions by being both poetic and going beyond the traditional fictional structure of a short story. The paper argues that ‘Girl’ is an unconventional piece of literature that crosses the borders of a short story to poetry. First, it obviously lacks the traditional structure to be classified as a short story. Second, the text embraces several poetic techniques which reveal it as poetry written in prose. Therefore, the paper purports to carefully consider the poetic techniques and rhetorical devices found in ‘Girl’ and make it much closer to a prose poem than a short story. The story depicts a pre-adolescent female being dictated by the instructions of a sharp-tongued mother who teaches her how to become a lady- both in the private setting of the house as well as in public- in contrast to what it is like for a woman growing up in Antigua. The paper’s considerations of Kincaid’s depictions of mother, daughter, and their relationship illuminate the poetic traits found including repetition, sound devices and word choice. The paper’s interpretation of ‘Girl’ reveals its poetic nature for being thoroughly repetitive and alliterative piece. The text’s repetitive quality does not only stimulate the reader’s intellectual appreciation of the text’s thematic notions and meanings but also promotes an overall unifying effect.
Highlights
As a point of departure, it is not insignificant to direct the reader’s attention to Kincaid’s life and works
Analysing ‘Girl’ as a prose poem, this paper aims to understand the importance of the text’s vivid use of specific poetic devices and discuss their implications
In the foregoing discussion, it has been argued that Kincaid’s ‘Girl’ transgresses the boundaries of generic labels which makes it read as a prose poem than a short story
Summary
As a point of departure, it is not insignificant to direct the reader’s attention to Kincaid’s life and works. Kincaid (1949) is one of the most predominant writers of the twentieth/twenty-first century She is a contemporary Antiguan-American writer whose writings including essays, novels, and short stories are reminiscent depictions of personhood, family relationships and colonial Antigua. She was born as Elaine Potter Richardson, but in 1973 she took the name Jamaica Kincaid as a pseudonym part of her wish to remain anonymous for her writings. The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) and My Brother (1997) are two autobiographical accounts which recount the author’s fraught relationship with her mother and the death of her younger brother Her latest evocative novel See (2013) revisits the end-of-marriage theme through depicting the life of a neglected wife who struggles to find love in marriage
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