One could classify both Kate Chopin’s “Ripe Figs” and Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” as coming of age stories. Both have two characters, a young woman and an older woman who is guiding, teaching, and monitoring the young woman in an apparent attempt to keep them safe from the ways of the world, especially those of men. The young women in the stories do not come of age in the stories, but they learn what that entails for them. Both stories involve references to the natural world and to sexuality, although the time setting in which they were written allowed for more direct comment in “Girl,” which was written several decades after “Ripe Figs.” The two stories represent some of the same themes and concepts about the coming of age of young women; however, they approach the topic in very different ways.
Chopin’s short story is set in the late nineteenth century in Louisiana. Because people were more guarded about their language at the time, Chopin could not be as direct as Kincaid was in her story. This means that the “advice” given in Chopin’s short story is much more subtle than that which is expressed in Kincaid’s. “Ripe Figs” is full of allusion that the reader must try to analyze and understand with little explanation or guidance from the author, while the advice offered in “Girl” is direct and unfiltered.
In “Ripe Figs” Maman-Nainaine, Babette’s godmother, promises her she can go to visit her cousins in Bayou-Boeuf when the figs ripen. However, neither the readers nor Babette knows exactly when this is going to occur. Babette spends her summer watching the figs to get the first glimpse of the ripening because she is clearly anxious to go to visit her cousins where the sugar cane grows in Bayou-Boeuf (Chopin). While there is no explanation given for why Babette is so anxious to visit her cousins, readers can speculate that Maman-Nainaine is elderly and probably somewhat dowdy. She may not have the energy and capacity for activity that Babette surely has at her young age. Surely, the cousins are more suited to the interests of a young person. Or, there could be another reason for Babette’s anxiousness about visiting her cousins.
When Babette goes to visit her cousins, the unspoken context is that she will get to go out in society with her cousins, which means she will be courted by men. This excites her to no end as it would many young women with raging hormones, as one assumes that Babette must have, or she may not be as excited about going to visit her cousins as she is. Maman-Nainaine connects the trip to Bayou-Boeuf with a natural process, the ripening of the figs, but that is not the only natural process mentioned. The sugar cane and the chrysanthemums blooming are also references that Maman-Nainaine mentions, but it is the figs ripening that are most important to Babette. Ioana-Maria Cistelecan of Confluente says that Maman-Nainaine “frequently used strange references to nature as a method of counting time. In fact, the ripening of figs was not the only instance of this tendency, as the godmother mentions also meeting her relative ‘when the chrysanthemums are in bloom’” (Cistelecan 60). The point may be counting time, but with time comes change.
One could compare the ripening of figs to Babette’s “ripening” or coming of age. Since the story does not mention Babette’s age, readers can speculate that she is somewhere around twelve or thirteen years old—just the time young women “become women,” and start noticing boys. In the context of the late nineteenth century in Louisiana, this may have meant that Babette was now ready for marriage. Her going to where the sugar cane grows could be a reference to going to where there are young men (or older men) looking for wives. Babette may have already felt the hormones raging through her and she may be interested in her own sexuality, so meeting men with whom she can feel that thrill of physical lust may be very exciting to her.
Another illusion to the natural world is the one that describes Maman-Nainaine “as patient as the statue of la Madone, and Babette as restless as a humming-bird” (Chopin). Babette is that busy, eager hummingbird looking to suck the nectar from life as quickly as possible. Readers know little about Maman-Nainaine except that she is Babette’s godmother, she feels a connection to nature, and uses it to determine the time for life’s events. She may be elderly, which may explain the allusion to chrysanthemums, which are associated with death. Teresa Gilbert of the Journal of the Short Story in English says “Ripe Figs” is “an extremely str
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