"Girl" depicts the mother-daughter relationship that appears when the daughter reaches adolescence, a time of great change in the relationship. The girl is hardly able to squeeze in a word, having only two brief sentences in the entire work. This is not even one speech by the mother, but a compilation of several bits of advice. To the daughter's ears, the overabundance of advice and rules her mother offers sounds like endless repetitive words. The mother doesn't consider her daughter to be mature, and tries to prepare her for adulthood and womanhood. The mother's lecture contains exasperation and spite (". . . like the slut you are so bent on becoming") tempered with love and patience (". . . if they don't work, don't feel too bad about giving up"). The mother offers advice and instruction on a wide variety of subjects. She teaches her daughter how to cook, clean, shop, and do laundry. She tells her how to behave in social contexts, how to smile at people she doesn't like, and which type of boys to avoid. She explains how to love a man and be loved by a man. She offers medical advice on how to cure a cold, and how to terminate and unwanted pregnancy.
             All of the advice offered by the mother shows the role of women in the community. Women were in charge of domestic affairs and running the household, doing the cooking, cleaning, shopping, sewing, and laundry. The advice all deals with subjects that are stereotypically "women's work." As the girl struggles to find her own identity, she struggles and rebels against the role into which society trapped her mother, and into which it is trying to trap her as well.
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