Kincaid was an only child until she was nine, when the first of her three brothers was born. Until then she’d had the sole attention of her mother, so life changed dramatically thereafter and at 17 she left for America, severing ties with her family and did not return to Antigua for 20 years, though it resonated deep within her creativity. Based on reading on her novels, I found out that Kincaid had a lot of hope to be very close to her mother, however it went down just the fact that her mother want her to have some gender role, mother-daughter relationship and

First, I will tell you about a short story called “The Girl” is the integral relationship between between the public display of an acceptable self and mostly colonially derived ideas of womanhood, that many people believe that woman should have some quantities. ” This is how you walk like a lady,” ” Don’t sing Benna,” ” Don’t squad and play marbles you are not a boy you know,” and social performances. These instructions offer clear suggestions that the speaker not only understands what constitutes “ladylike” behavior in the in the society. She also ensures the young female’s understanding of its importance in her public life, and perhaps ensures her chance of achieving other ends that the community deems important. Some important in “Girl”is how to perform and protect oneself from discrimination when she is under the proverbial watchful eye of this patriarchal community. Some lines say such as ” This is how you smile to someone you like” and ” This is how you smile to someone you don’t like,” undermine the ideas that the the speaker in “Girl” exclusively embrace the patriarchal system that she upholds. The fake smile is a convincing example of the speaker’s understanding of the need for females to live with manners and attitude in well been society according to Kincaid’s mother.
Second, I will tell other novel from the same author that basically have the same way that women should behave and it is called ” Annie John”.Annie John falls out of a “perfect harmony” with her mother when she rebels against her mother’s plans that she become a “young lady”. Because of this young-lady business, instead of days she spent in perfect harmony with her mother, she trailing in her footsteps, she showering down on to her, to kiss her and to have the affection and attention, “I was now sent off to learn one thing and another. I was sent to someone who knew all about manners and how to meet and greet important people in the world. This woman soon asked me not to come again, since I could not resist making farting-like noises each time I had to practice a curtsy, it made the other girls laugh so. I was sent for piano lessons. The piano teacher, a shriveled-up old spinster from Lancashire, England, soon asked me not to come back, since I seemed unable to resist eating from the bowl of plums she had placed on the piano purely for decoration.(AJ, 27-28)” It simply mean that the harmony that used between her and her mother had vanished and her mother had become someone else or a stranger living with her. But however that only happen when Kincaid is with her mother only in the house without her father. the nape of her neck, down the middle of her back for as far as could be seen before it was swallowed up by her school uniform, was a line of the same long, thick black hair, only here it flared out as if a small breeze had come and parted it. At recess, I would buy her a sweet–something called a frozen joy–with money I had stolen from my mother’s purse, and then we would go and sit under a tree in our schoolyard. I would then stare and stare at her, narrowing and opening wide my eyes until she began to fidget under my gaze. Then I would pull at the hair on her arms and legs–gently at first, and then awfully hard, holding it up taut with the tips of my fingers until she cried out.(Annie J, 7)