In Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl," the characters are implied to be the titular girl and her mother.

The world that they occupy is illustrated through a tense dialogue between them. With the exception of a brief interjection by the girl, the poem reads as a long, demanding monologue by the mother in which she gives the daughter a long list of rules and instructions.

Some of the instructions are as simple as rudimentary housekeeping, like how to do laundry, how to sweep the house thoroughly, or how to make bread pudding. But as the list grows, it becomes clear that the mother's understanding of how to raise a daughter is heavily immersed in gendered expectations. She tells her daughter how to cater to men, chides her cruelly against promiscuity, and encourages her not to feel too bad about the end of a relationship. This reveals the mother to be a complex woman who, despite loving her daughter and wanting her to succeed, holds beliefs that embrace the oppression of women and girls under the rigid, established systems of gender inequity.

The girl, in response, interjects only one question to the mother's tirade: what if the baker won't let her feel the bread to ensure that it's fresh, as the mother insists she must? That this is her one question is telling—she could question rules about gender, or about the way the world works, or about why it's her responsibility to meter male behavior. Instead her question is purely logistical. This suggests that she, too, may have already internalized these rules.