Who is Wearing the Pants in this Family?

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Recommended: The Relationship between Masculinity and Femininity

The gender roles men and women play within their relationship have been passed down from generation to generation. Two short stories will be analyzed and compared to show how these gender roles play an important part in the relationship of the characters within the stories. The daydreamers in the two stories are not satisfied with their lives and because of this; they are constantly escaping to a fantasy world. One escapes to feel more manly and in control of the world around him and the other escapes, pretending she has all the luxuries in life she had always dreamed of having.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber is a low comedy piece, written in omniscient, third-person point of view, letting the storyteller expose the reflections of Walter Mitty. Walter is a man who is a regular guy who inspires to be exceptional. He feels inept because he is not happy with his life, and he does not have the manly role in his relationship. He feels people no longer respect him because he is growing older and more forgetful. He daydreams to escape reality, and a wife who is constantly nagging, browbeating, and giving him orders and in short, "wears the pants”, to become the masculine, self-confident, aggressive man he wishes he could be. (Bowness, M, 2003).

As Walter Mitty is driving his wife to Waterbury, CT, he is daydreaming about being a Commander aboard a Navy hydroplane trying to fly through a rough storm. His wife interrupts his fantasy by yelling he was driving too fast. “You were up to fifty-five,” she said. “You know I don’t like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five” (Clugston, 2010, section h1.1 para. 3). The author drew an image in the mind of Walter being the Commander of the airpla...

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...ies in life she had always dreamed of having.

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Works Cited

Clugston, R.W. (2010). Journey into Literature. Retrieved from

https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUENG125.10.2/sections/ch00

Mark Bowness. (2003, August 6). A coward, wimp and daydreamer :[Final 1 Edition]. The

Sun,p. 8. Retrieved May 2, 2011, from ProQuest Newsstand. (Document ID: 530264061).

National Gardening Association. (2010). Coreopsis. Retrieved from

http://www.garden.org/plantguide/?q=show&id=2043

Schreider,P. (nd). Webley Mk4 Revolver. American Rifleman. Retrieved from

http://www.americanrifleman.org/ArticlePage.aspx?id=1359&cid=28

Tiersten, L. (Author). (2001). Marianne in the market: envisioning consumer society in Fin-de-

Siecle France. Retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ashford/Doc?id=10051187&ppg =1.

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