Gender Roles In Mary Karr's The Liar

“’What do you fear, lady?’ He asked.
‘A cage,’ she said. ‘To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.’”
-J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (Tolkien, 767) Many people refuse to believe that the expectations that society’s gender roles enforce upon us do more harm than good. But these cages have been the undoing of many. An excellent example of this occurrence is the character of Mary Karr’s mother in Karr’s memoir, The Liar’s Club. Charlie, as she is known, faces tall expectations that she ultimately cannot reach by her own mother, her society, and ultimately herself as well. These harsh expectations placed upon Charlie and her own sense of failure following her first marriage ending horribly lead to the psychotic break in chapter seven and her behavior in Colorado.
But when she is unable to live up to those expectations, her world quickly becomes darker. Her mother sharply disapproves of her and favors her own more successful, Dotty. This disapproval leads to impulsive behavior, a precursor to the erratic breakdown she has at the end of chapter seven. Mary at one point describes her grandmother passive-aggressively praising Dotty, and Charlie’s