The Old Gringo Gender Roles

907 Words2 Pages

Within The Old Gringo, an elderly American writer, who lost both his sons due to suicide, decides to leave his old life behind to seek death in the middle of the Mexican revolution. He comes across the army of Pancho Villa which is led by General Arroyo. General Arroyo and his group had just freed land from the wealthy Miranda family. At the hacienda, the old man meets Harriet Winslow, who is hired to tutor the young Miranda children. However, when she arrives, the family had already fled with their parents from Arroyo's army. As the book continues, Harriett appreciates the Mexican culture she finds around her. By the end of the novel, she decides that instead of changing Mexico, she wants to learn to live with Mexico. Harriet illustrates …show more content…

They determine how males and females should think, speak, dress, and interact within society. Within this book, Harriet expresses these types of roles. Women are usually portrayed as a teacher or a nanny. Harriet Winslow is a perfect example of this. When duty called, Harriett had to save a little girl. She had to press her mouth to the sick child’s mouth, suck, kiss, air, in and out, receive, spit out, the obstruction, the child’s phlegm, tell herself, it doesn’t matter… and the child cried, strong and clear, as if she were newborn. Nannies have to put up with tragedies each and every day which goes to show how Harriett portrays that job and by doing so, she saved a little girl’s life. Another good example of a gender role is when Harriett states, “What these people need is education, not rifles. A good scrubbing, followed by a few lessons on how we do things in the United States, and you'd see an end to this chaos.” She talks about how the children need a good education, something important unlike learning how to shoot a gun. Men used her to get close to the Miranda family, which is the only reason why they kept her around for so long. In Revisiting the Green Prison, it stated, “During the first half of the twentieth century, women seldom, if ever, worked on the banana farms of the U.S. fruit companies” , meaning that these jobs were hard work and women were not to be out in such harsh conditions. The men would be in charge of these jobs and instead women were expected to have dinner prepared when the men came home from a long day. Harriet was upset because no one allowed her to live up to her full potential and showing them that she is capable of doing a man’s

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