Comparing Women In 'Girl And Jeffrey Eugenides' Virgin Suicides

There are a lot of stories out there that shine positive light on women, but the number of books that negatively depict women far outnumber those of the positive books. In Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Girl’, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Virgin Suicides, and Thomas Harris’ The Silence of The Lambs, there is a overall pattern of females who were treated as unequal by the people in their lives. In Virgin Suicides, there are five sisters Cecilia, Bonnie, Lux, Mary, and Therese Lisbon. The mother ran the house like a prison and would not let the girls participate in anything that other girls their ages were doing. This behavior soon leads to the suicide of all five sisters. The same unjust action went on in Kincaid’s ‘Girl’ the mother forces the daughter to remember

The girls were outcastes not because they were different but because their mother forbid them to do anything that kids their ages were doing. Ms. Lisbon raised the girls in a very strict household only allowing the girls to go to school and church. After the youngest sister attempts suicide narrator writes this about the father, “he had long harbored doubts about his wife’s strictness, knowing in his heart that girls forbidden to dance would only attract husbands with bad complexions and sunken chests” (Eugenides 20). The mother did everything she could to keep her daughters away from the sinful ways of the world, even if that meant the girls never got an opportunity to do what normal girls their age did. Her not giving the girls the same opportunity as others was very unfair. Therese, one of the older sisters says “we just want to live. if anyone would let us” (Eugenides 128). One can believe that when she says this she is implying that the people in her life are making it impossible to live a normal life without all the rules. Their parents restricted them to never leaving the house, and when they did leave to go to school everyone was very judgmental towards them because of their lifestyle. These girls were treated unequally as if they were incapable of acting independent without

Lisbon stopped the girls from having a normal life, so did the mother from ‘Girl’. The mother demands that the daughter learn everything she needs to know to be the perfect house wife, this forces her to grow up a lot faster than she should. The daughter in ‘Girl’ was taught to how to wash clothes, how to act and public and how to act and look to attract a good man. Kincaid writes “Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; This is how you smile at someone you like completely; this is how to love a man (Kincaid 444). By teaching things like this the mother was keeping her daughter submissive so she would never be able to live a normal life on her own cause she would need a man to provide for her instead of being independent. The daughter was not treated equally as the other kids; she was not allowed to play certain games because the mother thought it was for boys. The mother says “don’t squat down and play marbles- you are not a boy, you know; (Kincaid 444). The daughter was not allowed to do any of the things that the other children were doing because the mother was so strict. Her mother to bent on making sure she did not grow up to be a slut and was always on her case. There is proof of that in the story, the mother says “on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming.” (Kincaid 445), when the mother says things like this it makes the daughter feel insignificant like she can’t do anything