Tough Guise Essay

She Can Only Go Home: Roles of the Female in the Domestic Sphere 1

She Can Only Go Home: Gender Roles in the Domestic Sphere

In the film Tough Guise the narrator flashes a scene from The Wizard of Oz as an example of the masks that males in western culture are expected to wear as an expression of their masculine gender. It made me think about the roles the women play in this film and how that relates to how women are expected to wear their gender in the public and private spheres, and how these roles relate to the expectations placed on women in their work and home life.

Women in American culture have some pretty clear expectations placed on them as to what their role in society entails. A little girl’s first toy is often a baby doll,

When faced with the Wicked Witch of the West, one of the possible consequences of rejecting the domestic life, suddenly there is “no place like home.” Teetering on the edge of perceived comfort and consequence, Dorothy finds herself wishing for home fervently, without taking any pleasure or curiosity in the world she has stumbled into. As she learned from Aunty Em there are far more important things to do than to frivolously explore the land around

It is through this destruction of their desires that woman will be deserving of taking her place in the home. When she destroys that part of herself that is wanting for more, she is agreeing to prioritize home and hearth above self-indulgence and curiosities. The audience knows that the Wicked Witch wants the ruby slippers, but never knows what it is she wants them for, the simple act of wanting is enough to condemn her. The dangers of being a woman who wants, as Friedman (1996) explains, has the danger of only being able to want, of having no way of finding satisfaction in domesticity, she becomes a threatening symbol of female power, outside of the realm of the female. She Can Only Go Home: Roles of the Female in the Domestic Sphere 4

The Witch’s counterpart in Kansas, Almira Gultch, although a powerful woman, is not respected, nor perceived as desirable. It is this very model of spinsterhood that Dorothy must defeat, via the Wicked Witch of the East, in order to return home. Dorothy must overcome her rejection of domesticity or risk becoming that which she despises. As Fisher (2013) points out this is an unsuitable situation for a woman to find herself in at this time and place in culture, regardless of Dorothy’s personal feelings on the matter.

“As marriage was the normal and expected role for middle class women to follow, those that did not marry were regarded as