A good portion of the "chant of information" the mother passes onto the daughter is made up of specific directions on how to carry out the domestic work for which the girl is clearly being trained. The mother's advice concerns such "woman's work" as washing clothes ("Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry"); sewing ("this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a button-hole for the button you have sewed on"); and cleaning house ("this is how to sweep the house; this is how to sweep the yard"), as well as setting the table, ironing and buying fabric. The use of repetition here is suggestive of the repetitive nature of the endless domestic chores which the girl seems condemned to spend her...