Advice

Countress P—‘s Advice for New Girls

​In this poem Trethewey describes what new girls, who find themselves working in a Storyville brothel, would encounter in their first days. It can be paraphrased, through Ophelia’s description of what she was told on her first day, that the girls are required or expected to be very compliant and corporative with their customers. It is expected that the girls learn to be watched, in anyway, by their costumers and do not question their motives. It is also expected that they remain still and quiet, unless they are told to talk and move by the costumers, because it may offend or angry the costumers. A very high level of detail and attention is devoted to ensuring that the girls meet all of their costumer’s needs and desired. A great deal of attention also goes into the decoration of the house, as Ophelia describes. Ophelia describes the house as high class and luxurious; the meaning of the house, however, is low-class and dark. All of this is to ensure that costumers are happy and return for an enjoyable time; the girls are employees and the house is a corporatized business that only stands to make a profit.