General Overview of the poem "Girl"

The poem “Girl” is based on the life experience of a mother. In this poem a detailed advice is given to a young girl by her mother. It covers almost everything that a girl is expected to learn in her life. According to this young girl’s mother a girl should know how to iron and wash the clothes and dry them; how to clean the house and surroundings; how to prepare dinner and set the table; how to behave in public or in short how a young girl should carry her business in the male dominated society. The old woman advises the young girl on how to use medicines and herbs and also on how to plant trees. The old woman further says to the young girl that she should not sing Benna in Sunday schools. She should know how to behave in the presence of men. She should keep herself neat and clean. She should maintain distance from wharf rat boys. The young girl should know how to sew a button or hem a dress. She should also know how to squeeze the bread before buying it to check if it is fresh. So we see that no importance is given to the feelings of this young girl, rather she is advised to follow the rules of the patriarchal society and is not allowed to develop her own personality. She is not even allowed to express her thoughts as the poem is in the form of a monologue and the girl only utters a few sentences here and there in the text of the poem. However no importance is given to these. Also the mother seems worried and wants this young girl to act according to the rules of this male-dominated society and behave as a girl is expected to do lest she should be in some sort of trouble.

https://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/girl/

Visit this webpage for detailed analysis.

Sample Paragraph

this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad won’t fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?

Reference to the context: The given lines have been taken from the poem “Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid. She is an Antiguan-American novelist and essayist. She has written this poem to show the idea of social conditioning of the female gender. It is a prose poem and in the form of a dramatic monologue.  In this poem, the mother advises her young girl on decent social behaviour. The poem is a series of advice given to a growing young girl by her mother.  It's a long list of do's and don'ts. 

Explanation:  In this  section of the poem, the mother advises her young daughter on how to catch a fish and how to throw away a fish she doesn’t like. The mother tells her that if she follows the advice then nothing bad will happen to her. She advises her on how to bully a man. She then warns the girl how a man can bully/control/overpower her. She further guides her on how to love a man and if that does not work there are many other ways to impress him. She consoles her by saying that if no method works then she should not feel bad about giving up. She gives her advice on how to make a living. She guides her to always squeeze the bread to be sure of its freshness. The girl interrupts and asks what if the baker will not let her feel the bread. The mother angrily replies that after all this advice she should not be the woman whom the baker will not let near the bread.  

Critical Comments: In the poem “Girl”, a worried mother is trying to teach the rules of decent social behaviour, established for girls in a male dominated patriarchal society so that the girl can become a socially  acceptable and respectable woman. The mother thinks that a girl is irresponsible and may waste her life if she does not behave properly in society. The series of advice given by the mother is like a guide-book to the young girl that she has to follow.

https://poemanalysis.com/william-butler-yeats/a-prayer-for-my-daughter/

Visit this webpage for detailed analysis of the poem

Yellow Fish 

Ambai is the pen name of famous Tamil woman writer CS Lakshmi. She is an historian and a creative writer. She writes about love relationships, quests and journeys. Her stories have been translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom in two volumes titled "A Purple Sea" and "In a Forest a Deer". Her writings show ideas of feminism and eye for detail and a sense of irony. She was awarded the Lifetime Literary Achievement Award of the Tamil Literary Garden. 

Central theme/Main Idea/Critical Appreciation of the story "Yellow Fish"

The central theme of this short story is a mother's profound love for daughter. Mother loves her daughter so much that she begins to see her image in anything which seems to resemble her even remotely. This is what happens when the narrator looks at the yellow fish desperate for water out on the dry sand, thrown away by some fishermen on the shore. The narrator at once identifies the yellow fish with her daughter Jalja. The yellow fish opens and closes her mouth gasping for water and this makes the narrator remember her stillborn child,  a daughter, who died shortly after her birth.

She recalls how the little child gasped for breath inside the incubator and opened her mouth like this yellow fish. Her name is Jalja, born out of water. She became furious when her husband, Arun, did not want her to see the ashes of their daughter brought in an urn. Toward the end of the story a fisher boy is asked by the narrator to throw the yellow fish back into the sea. As the yellow fish returns to blue-grey-white water of the sea she remembers the ashes of her daughter were cast in this very sea. She is presently on the shore where the ashes were cast. It shows that she continuously thinks about her dead daughter. Yellow Fish is a highly moving story told by a narrator in the first person. The name of the narrator is Anu and the story begins by describing the settings, the arrival of fishermen's boats and keeps the suspense alive until the narrator begins to identify her dead daughter with the yellow fish. The story "Yellow Fish" presents a collage of colours. The very title of the story contains a colour word, yellow. There are black hands of the fishermen, the brown wood of boats, painted troughs and the white bellied fish. Then, there are different colours of the sarees worn by fisher women and the background is the ash-blue-grey of the sea. The colour of the fish is yellow and it makes the narrator think about their baby daughter in the incubator who has a pale red mouth. The collage of colours in the story provides vivid details. Both water and the sea are very important points of reference in the story "The Yellow Fish". The narrator's daughter was named Jalja even before she was born. The word means 'born out of water' like a lotus. When Jalja passes away, her ashes are thrown into the sea. So, both water and sea are significant words in the life of the narrator Anu.

Reincarnation of Captain Cook written by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is a foremost modern Canadian writer. She is now widely recognised as an advocate of developing writers. She was born in 1939 in Canada. In her books, she expresses strong feminist themes talking about common novel women in the street. Canada and women are at the centre in most of her writings. Margaret Atwood's novels are "The Edible Woman", "Surfacing" etc. 

Main idea of the poem Or  Explain that the poem Reincarnation of Captain Cook is a feminist poem.

Since prehistoric times male domination has not allowed women an equal chance in any sphere of human activity. Human endeavours from writing to fighting and from waging to voyaging have been controlled and governed by men. Exploration in all areas of human knowledge, action and experiences have been dominated by males. As a result everything has been seen and explained from a male perspective. Women had either been denied or given only a marginal role and space in all such endeavours. It has been assumed that the male perspective includes the general perspective as well. But this is far from the truth.

Margaret Atwood poem reincarnation of captain cook emphasizes this point in an interesting manner. She begins the poem saying that when she thinks of exploring the world she is told by the authorities that everything has already been discovered and there is no need for her to do the exploration. But she is determined and so starts her journey anyway. She only discovers that different countries, regions and seas have already been marked and named. Tourists have visited deserts and caves; exploring ancient sites. These discoveries have been made by the male historians, philosophers, explorers and cartographers. All these people are males. The poet wants to read, discover and question these established one sided male-dominated point of views but is unable to do so. The poet wants to explore the world from a fresh perspective. She wants to be reincarnated as a female Captain Cook alluding to the Captain Cook who was a British cartographer and explorer and who discovered the route to New Zealand and east coast of Australia. This perspective aims to rewrite history through feminine point of view, and is the dominant theme of the poem. The feminist perspective means a positive change in psychological and intellectual outlook and mindset towards women and their issues. All the existing parameters need to be redrawn according to fresh discoveries. All areas of human knowledge and experience must be presented from a female perspective. It can be easily concluded from the poem that it is a feminist poem demanding equality, justice and equal opportunity for women. The writer wants that all the maps of the world are made clean so that she can start afresh and write history from her perspective. She hints in the last lines of the poem that civilization must be restored to pre-modern times when people used to live in the woods so that human development and growth could be re-designed to include the voices from the margins, especially women.