Gender roles Essay

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Traditional roles are often encouraged or challenged in short story texts. The Lottery by Marjorie Barnard and Listen to the End by Tony Hunter have both been constructed with various narrative conventions. Bernard and Hunter both share different views towards traditional Gender roles. Barnard has used the narrative convention third person omniscient in The Lottery to convey traditional gender roles. Ted is a man who is a hard worker and a faithful husband. He is respected by his fellow peers and like all men of the depression era, has all the control in the marriage. All that was expected of women was that they “stay at home and look after the children”. It appeared that there was “Nothing much in that”. Ted’s nature caused him to feel “his assurance threatened and the corner of his mouth twitched uncomfortably in his fat cheek”, when he found out that his wife had won the lottery. This made him feel as though he wouldn’t be needed anymore. Third person omniscient has also been used to create distance between the reader and Ted’s wife, Grace, so the reader isn’t informed of her true feelings. “She was evidently feeling something and feeling it strongly”. Evidently men are not aware of their wives’ true feelings. Ted’s house viewed through the eyes of today’s society would be aesthetically grotesque. The house is a symbol of Ted’s marriage, and like his house he has been married to Grace for ten years. The author has used symbols in this text to reveal the reality of Ted’s life and traditional marriages. When Ted walked through his gate and looked at his house he saw the reflection of his marriage. “It was if he saw the house he had lived in for ten years for the first time. He saw that it had a mean, narrow-chested appearance. The roof tiles were discoloured, the woodwork needed painting, the crazy pavement that he had laid with such zeal had an unpleasant
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