blog #4

The speaker in the story is a wise, older Caribbean person, most likely a woman, who is teaching a younger girl the proper way to be a girl in their society. The speaker is skilled at womanly deeds, as her advice is specific and straightforward, and is slightly judgmental towards the girl she is addressing and concerned that she does not appear to be a slut, which she repeats three times. This would imply that the woman is the girl's mother and is trying to teach her how to master the role in life she was born into as a female. The woman is lecturing and, because the entire page is one sentence, seemingly rambling along on things the young girl should and should not do. She is also concerned for the young girl, as if knowing how easy it would be for the girl to stray from the lady-like path and get into serious trouble. The addressee is a young girl growing up in the Caribbean, most likely a teenager. The prescriptions for being a "girl" are to garden, make food and medicine, clean laundry and the yard, mend clothes, and act like a proper lady.

Being a proper lady probably consists of being polite, the many ways to smile and talk to people you don't know or don't like, and taking care of one's possessions and image. This is obvious in the emphasis on laundry right at the beginning, the necessary skill of choosing and hemming clothes well, and especially in the need to sweep the yard well. The latter act also implies that the setting of this lecture is in a dusty or dry section of land. On the other hand, the foods such as pumpkin fritters and pepper pot suggest the society the characters live in is of the Caribbean islands. This could emphasize that they lived in a very poverty-stricken place. The okra and dasheen to be planted, stone heap for drying clothes, presence of wharf-rat boys, necessity to sweep a yard, and making of one's pudding and medicine point to the setting being a poor or developing place where people do not have easy access to things seen as typical life necessities in American societies, such as washing machines, grocery stores, and pharmacies. Such differences in expectations for the girl and ones for girls in our society are emphasized by the specific chores, but the main ideas of cooking, cleaning, and looking nice are still apparent in today's society.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uh2l0TQrdo