In Morley Callaghan’s short story, Rigmarole and Bronwen Wallace’s For Puzzled in Wisconsin, gender guides the characters of each story toward unbalanced positions of power in their relationships, ultimately leading to an overwhelming feeling of isolation and disunity. This becomes evident through the constraints of gender norms, and their inability to effectively communicate their feelings with their partners.
Within many respects gender plays an overwhelming role in defining a person, and promotes a sense of confinement to the characters of both Rigmarole and Puzzled in Wisconsin. The character’s acceptance of these norms allow for an imbalance of power, and ultimately a feeling of isolation. In Callaghan’s short story, Rigmarole, both main
Anna, looks back on her past relationship with a man named Jeff, and juxtaposes that with her current husband, many years later: Peter. She reflects back on her youth when she was with Jeff, and the time that they spent with her friend Gwen and her boyfriend Chuck. The first instance of imposed gender norms is that of Anna’s memories of Gwen and Chuck’s interactions. “She always called him ‘honey’ or ‘hon’. He called her ‘babe’. I could imagine Jeff calling me anything” (Wallace, 315). The difference between Anna and Mathilde being that Anna, though she recognizes these gender norms and conforms, she does not want to adhere to them. Whenever confronted with a gender norm she tackles it the best she can, even rejecting the norms whenever possible. When Jeff attempts to mimic Chuck, Anna shuts him
Even when examining Anna’s early relationship with Jeff, when she arranges for him to come up on weekends with Chuck. He protests saying, “Jesus, I don’t even know the guy…why didn’t you call me first” (Wallace, 315). Her insecurity about whether or not Jeff would come up on weekends without this convenience allowed for a lack of communication of feelings between Jeff and Anna. However, of more importance is Anna’s lack of communication with Peter. A large part of what makes Anna herself is her ability and love of creating stories. When her husband does not share this, Anna finds this challenging, and lets it become a barrier for communication. “His face set in the pained expression he wears for conversations like this – “What ifs” speculations. When Jennifer and I sit in a restaurant making up stories about the people around us, he closes his eyes, just as he’s doing now” (Wallace, 317). Peters almost dismissal through the closing his eyes of Anna’s love for story making allows for a distancing and ultimately a deep seeded feeling of isolation and
Anna is not afraid to speak her mind. For instance, when her mom is she is so called “sick.” Anna asks her mom if her hearing is okay, she says “Yes”. Therefore, Anna tells her that there is nothing wrong with her and leaves her Mom’s room. She is outspoken when she stood up to her Mom at the factory; Anna was tired of her mom telling her that she is overweight. Anna stood up to her mom and said “ You’re overweight as well, so why are you judging me if we both have the same weight.” Anna is outspoken when on her last day of school, she goes to her job and quits,
Recently, I saw a movie about female tennis champion – Billie Jean King, and although I have never been into the feminism (neither can I say that I quite understand it), her character woke up some other kind of sensitivity in me. After this – to me significant change – I could not help myself not to notice different approaches of John Steinbeck and Kay Boyle to the similar thematic. They both deal with marital relationships and it was quite interesting to view lives of ordinary married couples through both “male” and “female eyes”. While Steinbeck opens his story describing the Salinas Valley in December metaphorically referring to the Elisa’s character, Boyle jumps directly to Mrs. Ames’s inner world. Although both writers give us pretty clear picture of their characters, Boyle does it with more emotions aiming our feelings immediately, unlike Steinbeck who leaves us more space to think about Elisa Allen.
Despite the perception that women are inferior and incompetent, seldom do women withstand this consistent discrimination upon their sex. Under the jurisdiction of men in their families, women are oftentimes restrained from opportunity and development. Curley, a man with an intimidating complexion, forces many, including his flirtatious wife, to succumb to his power. However, he fails to recognize his wife’s rising empowerment as she manipulates men around him into becoming her pawns. John Steinbeck’s usage of Curley’s wife in the novel Of Mice and Men delineates the desire of women to eliminate the over dominance of men through deceit in exchange for their own power.
Knudson-Martin, C., & Mahoney, A. R. (2009). Couples, gender, and power: Creating change in intimate relationships. New York: Springer.
McCarthy reinforces the mind/body and culture/nature gender dichotomies proposed by Sherry Ortner through character presentation. She aligns mind and culture aspects with male characters, and bodily concerns and natural occurrences with the female. She exhibits traditionally feminine qualities of writing by using a more circular rather than linear style, giving attention to details of food, clothing, and body appearances.
Conflict theory in sociology suggests that the relationship between females and males has traditionally been one of unequal power, with men in a dominant position over women (Schaefer 278). By page one of the short story there are examples of this inequality and subordination. Speaking of her illness, the narrator states, “You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do? If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is ...
Gender Roles and Stereotypes Explored in Judy Mann's The The Difference: Growing Up Female in America and Bernard Lefkowitz's Our Guys
The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much rather work alongside her father, who was “tirelessly inventive” (Munro 328), than stay and work with her mother in the kitchen, depicted through, “As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what to do next” (329). The girl is torn between what her duties are suppose to be as a woman, and what she would rather be doing, which is work with her father. She sees her father’s work as important and worthwhile, while she sees her mother’s work as tedious and not meaningful. Although she knows her duties as a woman and what her mother expects of her, she would like to break the mould and become more like her father. It is evident that she likes to please her father in the work she does for him when her father says to the feed salesman, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (328-329). Even though the young girl is fixed on what she wants, she has influences from both genders i...
This view has almost spun 180 degrees since the feminist movement rocked society. Critics rethought the role of women in society and in marriage (Murphy and Abbotson 6), and concluded that the women in the play are much more complex and powerful than earlier interpretations had given them credit for. Not only are the women a recreation for the men in the play, they can be seen as heavily influential on the lives of the men with whom they come into contact. Willy’s entire pathetic life could have been turned around if only Linda had encouraged him to follow Ben to Alaska rather than insisting the couple cling to the seemingly safe life they had begun to build. The secretaries, who at first glance seem to exist merely to perform such menial tasks as typing, actually are able to block Biff's and Willy's entrance to the offices of the powerful men who could advance their careers. (Stanton 131)
Suggested roles of all types set the stage for how human beings perceive their life should be. Gender roles are one of the most dangerous roles that society faces today. With all of the controversy applied to male vs. female dominance in households, and in the workplace, there seems to be an argument either way. In the essay, “Men as Success Objects”, the author Warren Farrell explains this threat of society as a whole. Farrell explains the difference of men and women growing up and how they believe their role in society to be. He justifies that it doesn’t just appear in marriage, but in the earliest stages of life. Similarly, in the essay “Roles of Sexes”, real life applications are explored in two different novels. The synthesis between these two essays proves how prevalent roles are in even the smallest part of a concept and how it is relatively an inevitable subject.
context out of which a work of literature emerges molds the interpretation of gender in that work.
Anna plays the role of the classic submissive female married to David's classic chauvinist male. "Wanting to remain attractive to her husband, Anna attempts to conform to the eroticized and commodified images of women promulgated in the mass culture" (Bouson 44). Although the novel is set during the 1970"s, the decade of one of the great feminist movements in our history, Anna remains a woman who maintains herself for her husbands benefit. In a critical scene in the novel, the narrator sees Anna applying makeup. When she (the narrator) tells her that it is unnecessary where they are Anna says "He doesn't like to see me without it," and then quickly adds, "He doesn't know I wear it" (41).
In this play, the men and women characters are separated even from their first entrance onto the stage. To the intuitive reader (or playgoer), the gender differences are immediately apparent when the men walk confidently into the room and over to the heater while the women timidly creep only through the door and stand huddled together. This separation between genders becomes more apparent when the characters proceed in investigating the murder. The men focus on means while the women focus on motive: action vs. emotion. While the men...
Indisputably, roles and characteristics of opposite genders have been ubiquitous, since historical evidence proves so – dating back to when the practice of oral tradition was favored over written language. This historical evidence is especially apparent in literature from previous time periods. In these works of literature, men and women often have very different social and economic positions within society. Particular duties, or tasks, are practiced depending on the gender of these individuals. However, in the advancing world we are currently living in, these duties are beginning to intertwine in an effort to allow equal rights amongst opposite genders. This effort to break the sexist barrier, which encompasses our world, has already begun rattling the chains of politicians and the like. However, with the progressions made thus far in retaliation to sexism and unequal gender privileges, the United States of America is heading in a positive direction towards gender equality. Nonetheless, the female gender is perceived as a lesser entity in society while the male gender is dominant and controlling. The masculine individuals in literary works usually govern, or direct the feminine individuals. These characteristics are often evident in various literary works – including “Hills Like White Elephants,” and “A&P” written by Ernest Hemingway and John Updike, respectively. The slow and steady transformation from a sexist society to one that allows inferior genders to perform similar tasks, if not the same as their superior counterparts, may disturb the ideological mindset of figures with authority; however, it provides inferior genders with the opportunity to branch out socially, economically, and politically.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.