Revolutionary Road Analysis

1403 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Gender roles in the 1960s

Suburban life in the 1950s was ideal, but not ideal for the women. Women were continuously looked at as the typical suburban housewife. In Richard Yates’ novel, Revolutionary Road, we are given the chance to see the dynamics of the Wheeler family and of those around them. Through the use of theme, tone and major symbolism in the novel, we are shown the perspective of gender roles in the 1950s. The author shows the reader the struggles of strict gender roles and how the protagonist of the story will do just about anything to escape from it.
The novel begins with the protagonist, April Wheeler, portraying Gabrielle in an amateur-theatre production of the play, The Petrified Forest. The play ends up being a total disaster and leaves April devastated, leaving her disconnected from Frank, her husband, and her neighbors, Milly and Shep Campbell afterwards. The play, The Petrified Forest, is a disastrous love story of a man who decides to have himself die to keep the women he loves out of a life of misery. In the end of The Petrified Forest, Gabrielle is able to escape from her horrible lifestyle and fulfill her dreams; April was never able to do that.
This play, which is the first part of the novel, symbolizes what is yet to occur—a disastrous love story between April and Frank Wheeler. After the play, April and Frank get into an argument in the car, leading April to walk off and telling Frank he’s, “got [her] safely in a trap” (Yates, 37). April is felt as if she is in a trap because of the role of housewife she is automatically placed in. She wants to be more than a woman who stays home, washes the dishes and takes care of the children, she wants to explore and be free, something that the 1950s gender roles are limiting her to not ...

... middle of paper ...

...cieties views on gender roles but nothing ends up changing. In reality, the only real difference, which occurred, was the death of April and her baby. If April had died, her attempts at change would not have been successful, though she was persistent in trying as in constantly giving Frank boosts of ego and even attempting to abort the baby so the plan to move to Paris would not fall through. April was alone in her attempt at change and nobody else was supporting her views, and through her death others saw her as somewhat crazy, comparable to John Givings. Her attempts at changing the gender roles in an unchangeable society in the 1950s failed to work and created a revolution in society, which simply just brought things right back where they started.

Works Cited
Yates, Richard. Revolutionary Road. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, Vintage, 2008. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Alice Munro’s Boys and Girls and John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums

    1440 Words  | 3 Pages

    The difference between men and women is a very controversial issue, while there are obviously physical differences; the problem is how the genders are treated. It is stereotypically thought that the men do the labor work and make all the money, while the women stay in the house, cooking, cleaning and taking care of the children. While this stereotype does not exist as much in the 21st century, it was very prevalent in the 1900s. By using many different literary tools such as character development, symbolism, and setting, Alice Munro’s Boys and Girls and John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums challenge this controversial topic of the treatment of women versus men in the 1900s.

    Read More

  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: Tangled in Society's Expectations

    1617 Words  | 4 Pages

    A notable image that readers of the twentieth-century literature easily recognize is a bell jar. A bell jar is an unbreakable, stiff glass container that confines objects within its inescapable walls. It metaphorically represents the suffocating and an airless enclosure of conformism prevalent during the 1950’s American society. More specifically, American societal standards approve men to have the dominant role as they are encouraged to attend college in order to pursue professional careers. They are given the responsibility of financially supporting their families. In contrast, a women’s life in the 1950’s is centralized around family life and domestic duties only. They are encouraged to remain at home, raise children and care for their husbands. Women are perceived as highly dependent on their husbands and their ability to receive education is regarded as a low priority. Thus, the social conventions and expectations of women during the 1950’s displayed in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath correlate to Esther Greenwood’s downward spiral of her mental state. Throughout the course of her journey, Esther becomes increasingly depressed because of her inability to conform to the gender roles of the women, which mainly revolved around marriage, maternity and domesticity.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in the 1950's Compared to Gender Roles Portrayed in Rebel Without a Cause

    1162 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many parts of history show that the 1950’s was a time of great turbulence and unrest in both politics and social life. All this unrest was caused by major historical events, including the Red Scare/McCarthyism and the Cold War. However, although many aspects of life in the 50’s were in such disarray, gender roles were not one of those aspects. In fact, there was a very narrow, strict idea of what it meant to be a male and a female during this time. The following discusses what was considered proper gender roles in the 1950’s and how these roles vary compared to the gender roles portrayed in the 1955 movie, Rebel Without a Cause.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Frank And April Wheeler In Revolutionary Road

    1398 Words  | 3 Pages

    Soon, the couple gets married, which satisfies the gnawing disappointment in both of them. Frank finally feels as if he has done something manly and strong, while April marries Frank to stave off the reality of her mediocrity. The Wheelers’ physical connection proves to be strong, but their already weak mental connection wears thin as the years go by. They realize that once they begin playing roles in their marriage, the harder it is to come clean, tell the truth, reveal their true selves. April and Frank realize they have been playing roles in their marriage at the same time that they realize they have been playing roles individually.

    Read More

  • Society's Conformity is a "Soldier's Home"

    1170 Words  | 3 Pages

    The adjustment from years on the frontlines of World War I to the mundane everyday life of a small Oklahoma town can be difficult. Ernest Hemingway’s character Harold Krebs, has a harder time adjusting to home life than most soldiers that had returned home. Krebs returned years after the war was over and was expected to conform back into societies expectations with little time to adapt back to a life not surrounded by war. Women take a prominent role in Krebs’s life and have strong influences on him. In the short story “Soldier’s Home” Hemingway uses the women Krebs interacts with to show Krebs internal struggle of attraction and repulsion to conformity.

    Read More

  • Homemaker to Superwomen: The Evolution of Betsy Rath

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the 1950’s becoming a wife, having and raising children and taking care of the home was the primary goal for most women. Post war brides were marrying young, having children at significant and unrivaled rates, and settling into roles that would ultimately shape a generation. This ideal notwithstanding, women were entering the workplace like never before and changing the face of American business forever. In the movie The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit directed in 1956 by Nunnally Johnson, we get an inkling of the type of voice American women would develop in the character of Betsy Rath. We are introduced to a wife and mother who leverage her role in the family to direct and influence. The decade of the 50’s signify the beginnings of the duplicity that women would embrace in America, being homemakers and independent women.

    Read More

  • leaving atlanta

    531 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the first section of the book it starts off with a little girl named Tasha. Tasha is in the Fifth grade, and doesn’t really have many friends. It describes her dilemma with trying to fit in with all the other girls, and being “popular”, and trying to deal with a “Kid Snatcher”. The summer before school started she practiced at all the games the kid’s play, so she could be good, and be able to get them to like her. The girls at school are not very nice to her at all. Her struggle with being popular meets her up with Jashante, a held back Fifth ...

    Read More

  • Women's Employment in the 1940s

    6013 Words  | 13 Pages

    Hartmann, Susan M. The Home Front and Beyond: American women in the 1940s. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982

    Read More

  • The Feminist Movement In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

    806 Words  | 2 Pages

    The point of this novel is to provide a personal understanding into the lives of women in the twentieth trying to break free from the restraints of society. This novel takes place in two different areas. Grand Isle, where the novel starts the journey Edna encompasses,

    Read More

  • Beneath The Surface Review

    925 Words  | 2 Pages

    The opening act of the play started with the main character, Andy, digging his way from Hawaii to Botswana. Over the course of his journey, the audience is introduced to an array of characters that are responsible in helping Andy find his inner peace. Along the way, he comes across a River that echoes back to him, meets a centipede, a school of fish, a group of three ants, and a pet turtle from his childhood. These characters help contrast the main theme of Andy’s solo dig through the ends of the earth in order to find solitude. In addition to Act 1, there is a scene in which Andy is reminded of a haunting image of his past. As a result, the audience is alluded to Andy’s purpose for his solo dig—that he had raped a girl and cannot cope with the idea that he is not a moral person at heart. In Act II, there is a scene in which Andy talks with a pterodactyl about her estranged husband, the brontosaurus. It was an important part of the play because it gave Andy a better sense about the relationships between men and women and his interpretation that he was at fault. Furthermore, there were several flashbacks of Andy with a red-haired woman [who she claimed to have raped her] repeatedly asking him to kiss him and telling him that he was drunk. Her relevance to the plot was stressed when Andy and several characters eat some apples as an allusion to get to the “core” [of the matter, but in this case the earth]. Through his venture into the core, there is a flashback with the girl that leads the audience to believe, for the first time, that Andy could have been in the right. Upon further self reflection, the play concludes with Andy getting out of the core, as he realizes that he cannot blame himself for what had happened in order to be able to move on with his life.

    Read More

  • Realism and Naturalism in Henry James’ Daisy Miller and Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie

    819 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...mopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse” (568). Rather than conveying the internalized thoughts and concerns of Carrie herself, Dreiser presents his readers with a general setting of the external challenges Carrie—and by extension a populace of late nineteenth century women—faces. Dreiser’s text demonstrates the struggle of being a woman subject to low wages, aggressive bosses and submissive work. In addition, Carrie does not have any vocational skillset that would afford her a “respectable” place in the workforce. Rather, Dreiser authentically portrays the ruthless nature of city life, predatory men and a capitalist driven economy. Instead of depicting the relationship between Carrie, her sister and the individuals she meets in the city, Dreiser’s naturalistic style focuses on her ability to survive and flourish within her environment by all means necessary.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Mad Men

    2109 Words  | 5 Pages

    The 1960s provided a reality time of suppressed females and overindulgent males within the society spectrum. Yet the nostalgia aspect of this manifests in the idea of the perfect housewife and the graci...

    Read More

  • The Movement for Women's Rights Inside The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    1638 Words  | 4 Pages

    Women have been mistreated, enchained and dominated by men for most part of the human history. Until the second half of the twentieth century, there was great inequality between the social and economic conditions of men and women (Pearson Education). The battle for women's emancipation, however, had started in 1848 by the first women's rights convention, which was led by some remarkable and brave women (Pearson Education). One of the most notable feminists of that period was the writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She was also one of the most influential feminists who felt strongly about and spoke frequently on the nineteenth-century lives for women. Her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" characterizes the condition of women of the nineteenth century through the main character’s life and actions in the text. It is considered to be one of the most influential pieces because of its realism and prime examples of treatment of women in that time. This essay analyzes issues the protagonist goes through while she is trying to break the element of barter from her marriage and love with her husband. This relationship status was very common between nineteenth-century women and their husbands.

    Read More

  • Away

    1970 Words  | 4 Pages

    The beginning of the novel introduces the reader to Esther O'Malley Robertson as the last of a family of extreme women. She is sitting in her home, remembering a story that her grandmother told her a long time ago. Esther is the first character that the reader is introduced to, but we do not really understand who she is until the end of the story. Esther's main struggle is dealing with her home on Loughbreeze Beach being torn down, and trying to figure out the mysteries of her family's past.

    Read More

  • The Evolution of the Role of Women in British and American Literature

    1818 Words  | 4 Pages

    “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.

    Read More

More about Revolutionary Road Analysis

Open Document