Girl Society and Class Quotes

First thing you need to know about this society? People are snitches. You misbehave, someone's going to tell on you. More seriously, what we learn here is that you don’t get to mix Antiguan and British culture in public. Singing Antiguan songs in a place where you're supposed to be on your best British behavior is totally on the do-not-do list.

Number two, someone is always watching you. Always. In fact, why don't you go ahead and eat your food in front of a mirror, just so you can be sure that you look pretty enough?

Certain people get so far pushed out of society that they aren't even treated like people—they're rats. (Also apparently they have cooties that can lower your social status, too.) Since wharf-rat boys and sluts are even lower on the social ranking than black people in Antigua, absolutely no one talks to them. But hang on. How do you think the white British people at the top treated people like Kincaid? Isn't this just passing the pain down?

Having eaten fruit on the street ourselves, we're pretty sure this is a lie. Okay, maybe it's not exactly a lie, but this is basically an excuse for the rule that eating in the streets in many West Indian countries is rude. Because people are watching you. All the time. Remember?

Why would you sweep a yard, you say? Because your yard is not made of lush manicured grass, but dirt. Read more about it here. A yard is an extension of the home and the family’s face to society. If Girl doesn’t learn how to sweep the yard well, you can guess what people will start to call her and what her new social status will be. (Hint: it starts with “s.")

Notice that something as simple as a smile is dictated by people's social relation to you. That’s probably not the only thing. Girl probably has to learn how to talk, act, sit, and even stand around different people with different social statuses. Wow, most days we can barely manage to remember one way to smile.

Even dinner changes based on the person's social status. That’s actually not too surprising since food seems to be a big deal based on how much Mom keeps talking about it. If food is important, of course it would change based on how important the person eating it is going to be. We have to wonder, though: what are you serving the unimportant guest? Reheated meatloaf?

You know, a lot of judging goes on in this text, but we never know who is doing all of it. Sure, it seems like women are judging each other—but men are doing their share of it, too. Just like Girl is learning that she has to serve the men in her life, she is also learning that they are going to be in charge of deciding who gets high social status.

We are 99% sure that this is about respecting other people's property or something like that. Or, of course, flowers that carry the plague. It's 50-50, really.

Okay, Mom just spent all this time giving Girl a game plan to deal with all the expectations of society, and she still doesn't get it? Come on Girl, get it together! Honestly, though, we get why she is confused. There are a lot of things to remember and Girl is just a bit uncertain that she has it. Think about it like studying for the SATs. Only, this is Girl’s life and the consequences are just a bit more severe.