Analysis Of Barbara Kingsolver's Rachel Price From The Poisonwood Bible

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Does situation make the conformist? As a result of human instinct, people adapt and assimilate to the society around them as a survival tactic. This state of conformity often lasts an entire lifetime; continually taking in the thoughts, expectations, and attitudes of those surrounding the individual and becoming a model of what is interpreted to be society’s ideal. However, distinguishing the difference between growth and individuality, and mere changes that occur from society’s fluctuations in the norms causes debate. A literary character that highlights this dispute is Barbara Kingsolver’s Rachel Price from The Poisonwood Bible who is a nonconformist who after growing up in a household and society of oppression, presents to the public the …show more content…

She equated this work to slavery exclaiming, “Mother was confused, but she always has the good manners to be hospitalizing even to perfect strangers, so she asked them in and told me to run squeeze some orange juice. So back to the kitchen for Rachel the slave!” (Kingsolver, Poisonwood 246). This societal expectation is not ideal for her; it isn’t her dream or fantasy. Rachel is not known for her hospitality or pleasantries like what was expected of a woman: to be submissive, nurturing, and agreeable (Strickland). A woman is stereotyped as being sociable and fostering relationships with those meaningful to them. However, this is not the case for Rachel who isolates herself from all personal connections and being involved in her loved ones lives, from not visiting them to not listening to their stories when they are around, to failing to recognize her nieces and nephews as her own. Instead, she seeks the company of strangers in the Equatorial and even that is only to a limited degree and time and is surface level company. This causes many to label her as a "failure as a true woman [who] underscores the deep connection between commercialism, imperialism, and domesticity that domestic fiction attempts to unmask" (Jacobson). Rachel rejects the cookiecutter and passive life of a housewife for the active role of a business woman. Thus, breaking away from the patriarchal oppression of society in exchange for power and control in her life just as the other Price women are acknowledged for doing (Krishnamurthy). She is establishing the freedom and independence that she was not granted in the hierarchy of her household and society. Rachel is shattering the American time period’s mold of what it is to be a woman, though it is often disregarded because she is not congenial while she does so, but that in itself is breaking the confines of

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