The Importance of Gender Roles

The Importance of Gender Roles

Gender roles play a very important role in today’s society, including in the homes of many families. In the three stories, An Indian Story by Roger Jack, Looking for Work by Gary Soto, and Girl by Jamaica Kincaid gender roles and who play them are a lot different. Both stories challenge the image of a perfect household: a man, woman, children, a house, and a dog. In these stories, their traditional households would be considered broken. An Indian Story is about a young boy finding that when his manhood is finally achieved, he didn’t need a traditional family to do so. The boy in the story has no name, but he has an aunt named Greta who takes him in after his mother dies and his father gets remarried into another family. I later came to the conclusion that the young boy was Roger Jack. Gender roles were important in this story because the young boy had both his mother and father until it all slipped away. His mom died and he later moved out of his father’s home because he was uncomfortable in the same environment as his father’s new wife and children. His aunt was only his only family for many years until he grew up and made a mistake of getting drunk at an Indian pow-wow. He then turns to rekindle his relationship with his father after he couldn’t handle his Aunt Greta being so upset with him. The main importance of the story is that even if you have a mother figure, you will always need the insight of your mother and father to be successful and have a positive outcome in life. The relationship with parents and their child is significant to growth.
In Looking for Work, the scenario changes a bit. Gary Soto describes a short piece of his life when he was younger. He desired to have a perfect family just like a television show he watched. His family didn’t agree with his suggestion of trying to imitate the family he watched on television. Gary then decided if he couldn’t convince his family to be perfect, he wanted to become rich and have money. He figured that if he had money and his family was rich they would become perfect and act just like the family on TV. I believe the gender roles in this story were different as to the roles in Indian Story. In this story, Gary had a sister, brother, and a mother. What I noticed is that his father wasn’t around. This may have played a significant part in Gary going out to look for work. He didn’t have a father in his life so he began to take on the male role in the family. His mother was so busy trying to play mommy and daddy that she really didn’t have much time to even notice Gary was out looking for work. Sometimes when parents have to play both roles there are some things they lack or miss out on. I believe that if his Gary’s younger sister was older, she would have most likely went out to look for work as well. She may have felt the need to also help provide for her family just like her mom. From her perspective she was also probably lacking the full attention that a young girl needs from her mom. Girl by Jamaica Kincaid was a total different role-play. The daughter doesn’t say anything. The mother is being a strict caretaker. In the script the mother tells the daughter things about becoming a woman, the things she should do, the way she should do them, the things she shouldn’t do and how they would be classified if she didn’t. At one point the mother quotes “this is how to make good medicine for a cold; this is how you make good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you” The mother’s communication to her daughter was to let her know, she has the power of life and death. She wanted to let her know that women play the most important role in life. She wanted to give her daughter knowledge like no other.
Girl was truly significant and different from An Indian Story and Looking for Work. In the first two stories both families lacked a complete mother role. The young boy in An Indian Story was fortunate enough to have a mother figure that took him many places and taught him many things. I believe even though he had that figure, a mother’s love is very different from the love anyone else can give. I wonder if things would have turned out differently for him if his mother hadn’t past away. The children in Looking for Work were fortunate enough to have a mother, but their mother couldn’t play the complete mother role. Their mother had to act as both mother and father for their family. She brought home the money, food, she had to cook, clean, and even cater to the needs of her children as much as she could. Reality is that when you’re playing more then one role, one of them may not have your complete devotion.
Girl on the other hand was completely the opposite. The daughter in this story has her mother’s complete attention and devotion. Her mother gives her complete advice and knowledge on what the right things are and what the wrong things to do are in life. The mother appeared to come off harshly to her daughter but I believe that it was way better then having no mother at all. It was better than having your mother and not getting complete attention from her. Whether the influence, attention, guidance comes from your mother or your father, you need it. In all three stories we can see that gender roles play a very important part of life period. The stories identified the different ways these roles can be played and the result of each one of them. Whether the roles are a child without both parents, a child who lacks a father, or a young mother protecting her daughter; they are all significant.