A person spends most of their developing years
under the guidance of their parents or guardians.
They affect how
we think, how we feel, and how we act. These are among the people who hold the
greatest
influence. Amy Tan's "Two
Kinds" and Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" both deal with the
relationship
between a young
girl and the guiding force in her life.
Amy Tan tells of a mother's expectation for her
daughter to be a
child prodigy. Jamaica Kincaid tells of
an unknown person describing to a girl how to be
a
"good" girl. Both essays
illustrate an authority figure that has expectations for a young female and why
and how those
expectations will come about.
As
young children growing up without a care in the world, we cannot comprehend why
authority
figures dictate
how we should behave. In "Two
Kinds", the daughter is expected to be a child prodigy
because her
mother believes "you can be anything you want in America". The mother sees other children
with amazing
talents and thinks her child could be just as talented, if not more so. She continually places
pressure on her
daughter to be some kind of prodigy. The
daughter is expected to be a great beauty with
unmatched dance
abilities, an untapped wealth of useless information, and piano-playing skills
like no
other. In "Girl", the expectations are
much lower, but just as stringent. The
girl is expected to do a
myriad of chores
and to become a "lady". She is
advised on how she should act and how she can avoid
being a "slut".
In "Two
Kinds", the mother has high hopes; she believes a person can be anything
they want in
America and she
wants a daughter who excels in some area.
All of the mother's hopes lay on the
daughter. Her hopes are bolstered by stories about remarkable
children with incredible talents. If
they
can succeed are
such a young age, surely her child can as well.
The mother wants her daughter to be the
best she can be,
but she has unrealistic expectations.
The girl in Jamaica Kincaid's essays is not being
held to such high
hopes and dreams. The expectations
placed on her are not as high, but are equally
unforgiving. Her authority figure wants her to be the
perfect "traditional" girl.
She is expected to cook,
clean, iron, and
not assert her independence.
Children,
though, are naturally independent and free-willed. For the authority figures to have
their way, the
girls must be obedient. Obedience and
denigration are the methods in which these
expectations are
supposed to met. In "Two
Kinds", the mother states, "Only one kind of daughter can live
in this
house--obedient daughter!" The
daughter does not want to live up to outside expectations, but she
does not want to
disappoint her mother; part of her feels obligated to be loyal. The mother compares the
daughter to other
children, which makes the daughter feel worthless. The mother talks about a three-year-
old who knows the
capital of all the states. She forces
the daughter to watch television shows featuring
talented
youngsters. She implies her daughter is
not as good as the other children. In
"Girl", the girl is
given two choices
- be a girl or be a slut. Essentially,
she is being told what she must do; there is no room
for debate. In between being told what to do, though, the
authority figure also reminds her she could well
be on her way to
becoming a slut.
In both
essays, the girls come full circle. They
both go through a period of being told what to be
and what to
do. Both girls resent the pressure and
expectations put on them in their adolescence, but in
the end, they
choose paths that lead back to their beginnings. Amy Tan's girl spends a good portion of
her youth hating
practicing piano. As an adult, she plays
an entire piece of music and is marveled by the
beauty of
it. In some respects, she becomes the
child her mother wanted. Jamaica
Kincaid's girl spends a
good portion
of her youth protesting the label of
"slut" placed upon her. In the
conclusion, she becomes
the kind of woman
she swore she was not.
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