His mother was considered to be an excellent cook. Their whole family beamed about it, the mother in law even beamed about it. After his mother was married, her in-laws decided it was high time that she learn how and start to cook. However would her son survive? This was the mother-in-law’s greatest fear.
The unequal distribution of domestic responsibilities has held women back for generations; it still today continues to hinder women’s progression in the work-place. It seems like everyone thinks mum will stay at home and do the dishes, her little boy will grow up to become a big, strong man but not her daughter, of course, she is far too busy washing her own children’s dishes. But it is not just women who suffer sexism, men do also. For example: Shelia’s Wheels sell cheaper car insurance to women only, and they say it's because statistics show women to be safer drivers. Would it would be fair for a bank to offer men better rates on loans if stats showed that men were better at paying back loans than women were, utterly ludicrous.
Functionalist Murdock suggested as children we are socialised into societies shared norms and values and he believed that males provide the economic roles and females provided the expressive role. Therefore it is natural for women to play the expressive role in the household looking after the family’s emotional needs. However, radical feminist Ann Oakley argues that the role of the housewife is a social construction and isn’t linked to the female role. The housewife role makes sure that women stay inferior to men making it difficult for them have careers. Women carry out the triple burden in the household; the domestic labour, emotional labour, and paid labour.
The author describes Elisa’s feeling as, “Everything goes right down into your fingertips. You watch your fingers work…” (p. 633). Once the tinker had left, Elisa’s mental stimulation and self-fulfillment had left with him too. It is clear that she is unsatisfied with the relationship she has with her husband. Before the headed out for dinner, Elisa started to dress nicer and look for feminine.
Beth’s office is through the kitchen in the back of the store. The Paradiso’s mission statement is “To build a lifelong partnership of raving guest, associates and stockholders”. Her job is to order supplies, doing schedules, hiring employees, cooking, serving, counting the register at the end of the day and taking care of the store. Beth says her least favorite thing about her job is the turnover never having enough people to run the store. There are times that she has to be the manager and the cook at the same time.
Edna Pontellier, often reflects on her role of mother-of-two who is married to a well-off and often traveling brokerage-business husband Leonce Pontellier. The community views Leonce as the ideal husband, for Leonce he adores and provides for wife and children, he is quite consistently concerned about the welfare and happiness of his household. Yet Edna does not look at Leonce as her choice of husband, she says their marriage was accidental, that as she was growing up there are particular men that came around her that she would have wished to take her hand. Leonce is disciplined, insistent and low-toned, often dissatisfied about Edna's attention to the children and other household issues, more so because he is often away on business and Edna
At the time, a women’s role in a marriage was to take care of the home, produce children, and be obedient to their husbands. Janie, yet again, defying social standards, takes one step closer to finding her true
Housework was a very important task and women were supposed to take great joy in it. Upper and middle class girls were taught from a young age the skills they would need in order to keep a happy, healthy, peaceful home. While the outside world and working force were definitively male, the home was considered to be a feminine place. The outside world was evil and full of sin and wrongdoing, but the home was a moral haven (MacKethan). Husbands went to work in the corrupt world of industry, so they were meant to come home, decompress, and once again become attuned with their compassionate side.
This fact shows us that the members of the family love themselves more that the Mother. We can say that she is devoted to her family, but doesn’t think about herself at all because she does all the hard work that her family could enjoy the day. As she is altruist, she refuses to buy some new clothes. . in order to show this fact the author uses oxymoron “her old grey bonnet was awfully becoming her”, which is told by the girls.
Someone else is deciding which direction your life is going in. When marriage is a consideration people are old enough to make their own decisions. Love marriages offer more independence and freedom in the context of choosing who you are with and what you do. Due to the parents choosing the partner for the woman she then feels obligated to stay in the relationship for the sake of the family pride