Girl

The girl in the story is reminded three times of not becoming or looking like slut. Becoming a slut would make the girl an example of one with exchange value, which the main speaker, who I assume is her mother, seems to frown upon. But by the end of the story, the mother appears to be encouraging the girl to have exchange value, and maybe “sell” herself in a way, when she questions if the girl will become the “kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread.” The mother wants the girl to be the kind of woman that the baker will let near the bread to test whether it’s fresh or not. The mother contradicts herself in first telling the girl to not become one who displays exchange value and then ends with the implication that she wants her daughter to do that very thing. There is also one line where the mother almost assumes that her daughter may become a slut: “this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child.” The medicine, like the morning after pill, will prevent the daughter from getting pregnant with the unwanted child that may have been a product of promiscuity.

When I reread Girl looking for the use value, exchange value, and sign-exchange value of what the girl is being told, I found a lot of evidences of use and sign-exchange value. The mother is telling her how to wash, cook, sew, grow, sweep, set, and make all these things that will show the girl’s use value. The mother also tells the girl things that will give her “owner” social status: eat politely, “walk like a lady,” don’t speak to “wharf-rat boys,” hem the dress to not look like slut, set tables properly, behave this way in the presence of a man. But the part the really flabbergasted the mother was when the girl asked “what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?” I believe the mother ultimately wants her daughter to become some sort of commodity that will "sell herself” in a way that will get her better things in life like being able to go near the bread.