"A Girl" part 4

This chapter further expands on McBride's  view of women and their role especially in times of distress. So far, every significant male character has been either a woman-user or an otherwise sickly character. So I found it surprising but also clarifying when we are given hint into the woman's role in a society filled with these males. When the girl goes for the first time, the narrator says,"Sister be a brother sister fixer of her woes. Am I like that? Am I that thing it seems yes" (131). Her mother thinks that this is how a woman should act, as a corrector or remedy for male problems.  But the girl refuses to help her mother with her brother, saying that it isn't her fault he is sick; it's not her problem to solve. Interestingly enough, she begins praying more by the end of this section comes. At first she looks down on her mother for doing this. But the girl comes to faith through her brother's worsening cancer. It seems that McBride is saying modern Irish women fight with their faith and are tempted by their sexuality. We keep getting reminders of the female body, but not just in a sexual way. We see the human body as a temple, or house, of God. When the girl invitingly says, "Come into me. Come into my house" she is not just talking about her apartment but more of her body as a house of God.

In connection with this,  we see an increased imagery of veins, flesh, meat and animals in these chapters. The narrator draws a parallel between her uncle and her brother by describing her uncle: "He is so white. Threads there under his skin. Blue twists I could trace" (145), similar to the vein imagery we get of the cancer in her brothers brain back in the beginning chapters of the book. Men are associated with disease and bodies as simple flesh or meat. We hear the girl describe a swan to her brother, how a beautiful creature with grace and poise turns into a dead animal with "wiggling bits" inside it that gets served on a plate (150). I think this could represent the girl as her body/ house of God and grace has been infected with wormy disease from the men she has gone back to. By the fifth chapter, the girl's idea of sex has shifted. She views it more as a martyrdom, way of getting tortured, to feel cleansed. She uses it as a way to suffer for her brother's sake, like Jesus suffering crucifixion to forgive the sins of mankind.