第23回  
Girl

Summary (締め切り 03年8月31日)



Written By Jamaica Kincaid (P65〜P66) 作者者自身の「Girl」朗読
提出順、敬称略
Girl
Middle-angle

This very short story is a simple enumeration of a mother's advice and instructions to her daughter in her adolescent. We can sense some sort of friction in the mother-daughter relationship between the lines. The mother's advice, or instructions from the daughter's side, is wide-ranged. She tells her how to cook, how (even what day) to wash clothes, how to sew, how to clean the house, how to smile to someone she doesn't like, what type of boys to avoid, how to deal with unwilling pregnancy, etc. She voices her strong concern about her daughters bent on becoming a slut.
Through these advice the mother wants to tell her daughter general women's role in their society. The daughter struggles against her mother only twice throughout the story despite of, what she thinks, such endless disgusting utterance. Although the mother is still dominant over her daughter, the girl hopefully will jump over the hurdle called "old-fashioned mother" by growing up.

This is how you should do things
ごえべえ
There is the way you have to do and you should do at each of lots of different occasions, for example, to wash clothes, to clean the house, to grow plants, and so on.
Unless you really want to become a slut, you’d better obey my directions. Then, you will be an attractive woman for sure, and you will be loved by a man and you will make yourself a good wife. When you want to spit up in the air, you can avoid it falls on your head if you did what I told you. Don’t worry if you did what I said you would never be a woman who the baker won’t let near the bread.


まとめちゃうと、えらいこと短くなってしまいました。

Girl
Megumi
This story consists mainly of the voices of Mother.
It enumerates discipline such as decency, grace, or anything like that as a lady.
In those enumeration you can find some daughter's words: 'but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school' and 'but what if the baker won't let me feel the berad?'
These daughter's quetions seem to stand for big objections to her mother's rstraint.
ぱんぷきん


The very story tells full of moral admonitions. But some sentences are inconsistency.
During juvenile, girls need a guidance somewhat chores such as how to clean the house, how to grow the plants, how to set a table for tea and dinner, even how to smile to others you like or you don't like. Although this mother tells her daughter very trivial well behaved manner, she also teaches her how to bully a man, how to spit in the air, how to squeeze the bread........ So, sometime things goes different ways that you intend. This is the how to succeed in your ordinary life.

ごえべえさん、短い文のサマリーって難しいです。お盆は会えなくて残念でしたがまた会いましょうね。明日から日本語を外国人に教えるボランティアやります。
ハローウィンの準備もぼちぼちやってます。ゲストのネイティブスピーカーもなんとか見つかり、ほっとしているところです。いつもサマリー遅くてほんとにすみません、、、。


「Girl」は一方的な母の言葉。そして、びっくりしたことには、この2ページの作品は1sentenceで成り立っている。This is how you....やThis is how to ...という形の文章が何度も繰り返し出てきます。ジャマイカ・キンケイド(1949〜)は本名はElaine Potter Richardson と言うようです。(結婚後姓が変わったかもしれませんが)College professorと結婚し、二人の子どもがいるそうです。
母からの教訓、人それぞれ微妙な違いはあっても、娘が幸福に暮らせるような工夫を母は娘に伝えたいのだろうなと思いました。
さて、ネット勉強会は2003年9月でちょうど丸二年になります。2年前、貿易センタービルの航空機テロのとき、middle-angelさんがちょうど飛行機でアメリカへむかわれた日で、始まったばかりのMLでは、middle-angelさんの安否がすごく心配だったことを思い出します。
始まったころのメンバーと今はかなり変わっていますが、ここまで続けられたことをみなさんに感謝したいです。二周年記念品を作りますので、次回Summaryを書かれた方にプレゼントいたしますね!

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第一回復習テスト/英検一級語彙練習問題1/第二回復習テスト(Part1/Part2)/
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