Society & Gender Roles

             While I have enjoyed looking closely at the way that gender roles are portrayed in texts throughout this course, I found myself interested in a few  of the readings more than others. The three that I liked the most were The Awakening, “Old Woman Magoun,” and Trifles. I wrote my final essay on how Edna in The Awakening and the grandmother in “Old Woman Magoun” used death as an escape from the way the views and expectations that society places on individuals. While society views death as a bad thing, I feel as if death was used in a way that is accepted in these circumstances. I also enjoyed Trifles because society portrays women as the less educated sex, but in this story, the women use their domestic knowledge to figure out the motive behind the murder, which the males overlooked completely. This shows that society’s views on genders can affect each individual differently, and these views are not always entirely accurate.