Linda Pastan's View Of Traditional Gender Roles By Linda Pastan

Feminist authors often tend to cast strict gender roles throughout their writings. Socially, economically, and politically it is known that women will always be inferior to men and these authors demonstrate this theory in a few words. Feminism does not favor the role of women, but rather prove that there is an distinct line that separates the two genders in society. Linda Pastan, a feminist critic, writes a short poem that focuses on a wife’s duties being graded by her family as if they were her homework assignment. In her poem Marks, Linda Pastan utilizes the reduction to body, denial of autonomy, and the act of ownership to temporarily re-evaluate her position within her family. By examining traditional gender roles, Pastan writes her short poem in the view of a mother figure. The mother describes the assessments of her husband, son, and daughter in which all tell her she can do better. They use three different grading systems, which subliminally expresses their desired uses of her as a person. The husband in the poem bases his evaluation of her based on her performances to please him. Pastan states, “My husband gives me an A for last night’s supper” (Pastan). This

The speaker is constantly trying to please her family by performing tasks such as cooking, ironing, fulfilling her husband’s sexual desires, and mothering her children. She listen and seeks the wants of her loved ones, and goes above and beyond to satisfy them. She is subliminally enslaved and owned by her family without consciously being aware of it. At the end of the poem Pastan states, “Wait ‘til they learn, I’m dropping out.” In stating this, the mother finally concludes that her family is revealing their use of her as a mother. She realizes that she is overworked and lives her life in a way of only satisfying them and pleasing their