The Wedding Gift By Kate Atkinson Analysis

The overlook of society creates this division between men and women, suppressing the latter. For generations women have been oppressed and against their counterparts. This barrier deems women less superior and unequal to men, making them appear weak. Since men are seen more strong, society thinks that they should be the more dominant ones and over shadow females. Kate Atkinson and Thomas Raddall use similar elements to display this idea. In the short stories The War on Women and The Wedding Gift, Thomas Raddall and Kate Atkinson show the oppression of the women and their attempts to achieve freedom. The authors both use similar elements of location and characters.

The superiority of men and weakness of women is evident in both stories and

Kate Atkinson and Thomas Raddall used elements of location to show how the characters attempted to achieve their own freedom. In The War on Women, Tina looks towards freedom outside the four walls she’s contained in. In an attempt to fight oppression Tina, exposes herself to the outside environment as a way to escape the chains of male dominancy and misogyny. The trade of her daughter was the last straw for her, it motivated her to take a stand. She stepped out of her comfort zone where she bared it all, literally and that is when “She was no longer invisible. She wondered how far she would get” (Atkinson 233). This shows that once she stepped outside, she did not feel like a shadow lurking in the dark but as a simple human that was visible. She knew the oppression wasn’t gone but wanted to feel that sense of freedom of being outside. Her true freedom was being able to escape the oppression placed by her husband at home and to protect her daughters. She risked her life just to have those few moments of liberty. In The Wedding Gift, Kezia wanted to escape her reality and turned to the environment outside to achieve her freedom. It is evident she wants to go outside when it says “Kezia had prayed for snow, storms of snow, to bury the trail and keep anyone from crossing the cape to Bristol Creek” (Raddall 114). She wanted to use the snow to cover her footsteps, so she wouldn’t get caught. This represents that she also wanted to escape the walls she was contained in and run away in an attempt to achieve freedom. She was praying for snow because it would help her run away so she wouldn’t be forced to marry Mr. Hathaway. She knew her opinion would not be valued and the only option to prevent her from being forced into a lifestyle, was by running away. The location of outside is a prominent theme found in both stories. The characters use the setting beyond the barriers of their