40 pages • 1 hour read
Girl, Woman, Other
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Symbols & Motifs
Secrets
Secrets are an important motif throughout Girl, Woman, Other, often developing themes of The Impact of Family Legacy and Human Connectivity and Interdependence. Shirley hides her anti-gay bias from Amma, though she can’t hide it from Dominique. Morgan hides their true nonbinary identity from their unaccepting mother until their adulthood. Winsome hides her affair with Shirley’s husband, allowing Shirley to believe in Lennox’s near faultlessness. Bummi never tells her daughter, Carole, about her affair with her employee Omofe. These details imply that no life is ordinary. Furthermore, the failure of Hattie’s father, Joseph, to divulge his family dealings in the trade of enslaved Africans points to the continuing dark legacy of oppression and colonialism, prompting readers to think critically about how structural oppression manifests in family lives, institutions, and ways of thinking.
Feminism
The motif of feminism develops the novel’s interest in intersectionality and generational change. Evaristo presents a prismatic, evolving understanding of feminism, the meaning of which changes from character to character. Shirley associates feminism with the radical thinking of Amma’s queer community and secretly harbors a disdain for it that is only palpable to Dominique. Penelope advocates for gender equity until she meets her partner Jeremy, who associates feminism with female aggression and betrayal due to a bad experience with his ex-wife. To please Jeremy, Penelope begins to associate the term with a man-hating mentality. She maintains that feminism “has a lot of answer for,” willingly giving up her early education in the thinking of groundbreaking second-wave feminist Betty Friedan to find “personal happiness” (442).
Dominque struggles with accepting gender-nonconforming people and trans women into her feminist arts festival, arguing with Amma that feminism has become a trend instead of a movement. Yazz informs her mother, Amma, that Amma’s understanding of feminism, and gender in general, is outdated, dubbing feminism “herd-like” and womanhood “passé” in favor of a post-gendered future. Amma takes into consideration Yazz’s point of view when she implores Dominique to think of these expansions of the term “feminist” as great possibilities for representation rather than restrictions.
Otherness
Each of Evaristo’s characters is othered in some way—a motif that develops the theme of Diaspora in Great Britain as well as the novel’s interest in intersectionality and Interdependence. Though born with varying amounts of privilege, each of the characters harbors a part of themselves that is rendered invisible. Bummi speaks directly to this when she notes that she is seen not for who she is but for what she does. Morgan hides their true nonbinary identity throughout their childhood. Winsome falls into marriage and motherhood so quickly that she forgets her early aspirations until asked by her granddaughter Rachel. Whether in their own families or the world at large, each character experiences some form of marginalization while at the same time leading a rich, compelling interior life. At times the characters are othered by each other, as in Penelope’s treatment of her cleaner, Bummi, and her colleague Shirley. Othering between characters even takes place within friendships, as depicted through Shirley’s secret disdain for her childhood friend Amma’s lesbian identity. Yazz too performs a kind of othering within her friend group, ranking her friends in order of oppression.
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