Literary analysis of The Girl by B

¶ … Meridel's novel, the Girl is a story that strikes many chords. A story that makes a statement that can be heard just as loudly today as it was yesterday in 1978 when first written. Clara is a woman that represents all women, the weaker side in a society that preys on just that. The Girl is a woman who represents all us all, too; she is the stronger, more proactive side in the face of anything. Both of these women are making peace with their pasts and their future. The summary of this story is the most present in the lines Clara says as she dies:

Memory is all we got. I cried, we got to remember. We got to remember everything. It is the glory, Amelia said, the glory. We got to remember to be able to fight. Got to write down the names. Make a list. Nobody can be forgotten. They know if we don't remember we can't point them out. They got their guilt wiped out. The last thing they take is memory. (126)

In short, this is a story about glory and about memory and about accepting your own choices, your own memory, and choosing not to feel guilty about it. This is a story about one woman learning to live a life she is proud of, while forgiving her past deeds as she approaches her death. Clara is a prostitute who has spent her life committing deeds that she is very ashamed of. She chose to wander the streets at night in the bitter cold until men came to buy her body. She decided to walk the streets when she was sick instead of resting and getting well.(52) While she could have chosen the hard struggle to honest money and health, she took the easy way out and in the end paid the largest price. This struggle represents the way same struggle many women face when it comes to their relationships with men. Sometimes it's a choice of sacrificing the self for a road that is less bumpy. It was Clara's fear of not being wanted that drove her out into the street and kept her there until it killed her.(105) This same fear lives in us all.

As we see Clara tell her story to the Girl, we see that the Girl is exactly what we want for Clara, we see the Clara is changing and turning into the woman she wants to be, but it is only as her death is fast-approaching. By looking closely at these women and their lives we can see the harsh oppression they are living under and how they struggle to be better women in spite of it. The Girl and Clara became close friends as they share living space in the Depression. The Girl said, "I liked to be with Clara..."(1). Clara said about Amelia, "She understands me, she thinks we are all important." (2) Tragically, in the end, we learn that most everyone liked to be with Clara in this way. She had just never realized it.

Before her illness took over, Clara was a woman who hopes and dreams just like the best of them. She dreamed of a future she didn't think she could create for herself. She wanted "a bright future and peace."(3) She didn't want to be thought of as only a prostitute, but wanted money and a promise that:

She will get married and sing in the choir and play bridge on Sundays with the best people. Or she might get a typewriter business in a swanky hotel and wear black dresses with white collars and cuffs and see that everyone comes to work on time. Or a tea shop is a good thing and some people rent a whole house and rent out rooms to the best people and sleep until ten. (8)

Clara dreams of a better life but has done nothing to create that life for herself. She is a woman who is a victim of her society's oppression and her own helplessness, both of which have always immobilized her. She had great plans for a future and for the things she would do, but action never seemed to come of it. Instead, she did the only things she knew how and in the process created the very same things until her death. More than anything else, it was herself that did the most damage.