Gender Roles

This week we started a new unit in AP lit of gender roles.  This unit introduces the gender lens of reading literature which and be a very new and different way of approaching many literary works.  When you view a book from a gender lens taking into account the status of the two genders and how the author viewed the relationship between males and females it can shed new light on literature.  Even if a book is not a necessarily feminist work and is not a work focused on gender roles the author always has views about gender that come out in his or her writing.  Whether it is a view that women are subordinate to women or that women need more rights, or simply that the two genders are equal and should be treated with equality.

We have been assigned books in class that we are supposed to read in a gender lens paying attention to the authors views and opinions toward gender.  The book I was assigned was The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.  This book was not written as a feminist book in any way but there are many interesting views expressed about the different genders and their roles in society.  One of the main characters was Lady Brett Ashley who was a upper class woman in Paris during the time that this novel took place.  She was originally British and is a very non-womanly woman even though she is described as highly attractive by the men in the novel.  She does things like smoke and drink in huge quantities which was not very common for women of this time.  This was especially not something that an upper class British woman would typically do as they are usually very ladylike.

She is offset by the very sensitive man Robert Cohn who has many of the traits that commonly associated with women.  He talks to Jake about all of his problems which is usually something that women do.  He has serious relationship problems, all of which he relates to Jake while they are eating.  He is very emotional and cries frequently but tries to counter this by boxing and drinking copious amounts of alcohol as does everyone in this novel.  He does not know how to go about his relationship with Brett and if you didn't know better you'd think he was a woman talking about her problems with a man when he is relating his problems to Jake.

These are the kind of things that you look for when looking through a gender lens so that you can see the different views that each author has toward gender.  Whether they are feminists, anti feminists, or neutral all authors portray some opinion of gender into their works.