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tructions, although we are not told what the consequences might be. The audience extends beyond the story’s immediate horizon ‘ beyond the narrator/author’s relationship with her daughter to anyone who has been a daughter or had a daughter, perhaps to anyone who was raised by their mother. The writing reads like a declaration, but what exactly is being declared is more ambiguous: a declaration of love for certain, of the difficult labors of women, of the troubled complexities of navigating social worlds as a girl/woman, of the damning limitations put on girls, of the ways these limitations are passed down generation by generation, of the complexity of our relationships with our mothers, of the ways we recreate our parents in our relationships with our children. The voice is stern and commanding, brooking no backtalk. But there seems to be a logic at work other than the validity of the mother’s voice ‘ her intent is being undermined. Twice the daughter’s voice intervenes, resisting the mother’s scolding, but it isn’t clear where the daughter’s voice comes from. The narrator seems to contain both voices. The girl becomes present in her absence which looms over the whole affair (including the title); a kind of absence that suggests a deeper connection between the girl and the narrator, perhaps that they are the same person. The phrases are a mother’s way of insuring that her daughter has the tools that she needs to survive as an adult. The fact that the mother takes the time to train the daughter in the proper ways for a lady to act in their culture is indicative of their familial love; the fact that there are so many rules and moral principles that are being passed to the daughter indicates that mother and daughter spend a lot of time together. The reader gets the impression that the advice that the mother gives her daughter has been passed. Social values held to be important in human society are effectively portrayed in literature. Through literary works, individuals/writers are able to express their subjective interpretations of life and social reality as they experience it. Literature as the mirror of social reality is explicitly expressed in the literary work, Girl by Jamaic