Gender And Gender Roles In The White Dawn

1366 Words3 Pages

Living in the extreme weather of artic Canada forces the Inuit people to have learn how to adapt and survive to their climate, without this adaptation skill they would all surely die. The novel, The White Dawn, follows a tribe of Inuit as three western strangers, Kakuktak, Portagee, and Pilee, are found and accepted into the group. The strangers threaten their culture, custom and survival as they try to adapt and change life in the artic. The gender divide starts with the Inuit tribe’s leader Sarkak, a feared leader, who exerts his power over his son Avinga, the narrator, and rest of the community. The main women character’s introduced in the novel are Ikuma, Sarkak’s first wife and Nuna, his last wife and Neevee, Kakuktak’s future wife. One …show more content…

These are all learned by children since birth. These gender roles are might not be just and right, but can be benefiter to the survival of a community. Masculinity and femininity is defined by what each gender wears. This might not be seen as much in today’s world but back in The White Dawn’s time it was. The strangers were ridiculed by the people so that they would conform to the Inuit society. This portrays women in a negative way not only because they are considered as a part of an objects but because the object has negative connotations. Women have less free will when it comes to the work they complete and in marriage. Most women care for children and the rest of the people in the community. They sew all of the cloths everyone wears, cook the food, and have basic female gender roles. Even in their daily lives they still have to listen to the men, hunters, husbands and leaders of the community. This causes them to be alienated from their work and society. In marriage they can be traded to spend time with other male to continue friendships and alliances between the males in the group. All of the different ways of treating women in Inuit culture is allows society to loss its morality and women to be objectified for the interest of the

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