Gender Roles in “A Rose for Emily” and “Papas Waltz”

For many years society has embraced the idea that the difference between men and women were biologically determined. Thou through traditions, media, and peers we act accordingly to how others view us. Each individual has pressure placed upon them based on their gender. Our sex is determined by genetics while our gender is programmed by social customs. Some theories interpret that a women is tender and a loving mother while on the other hand men are aggressive hunters and are the dominant one of the family. People who support this theory seems to believe that men and women are happier when fulfilling the roles nature determined for them.

Women are to be nurturing and men are to be providers by nature. An individual gender role is molded through socialization. Individuals learn the ways, traditions, norms, and rules of getting along with others. A persons environment has a big influence on the roles deemed accurately for men and women. In “A Rose for Emily,” we see the effects of socially given gender roles for a women along with the same social perception upon the male adult in the poem “My Papa’s Waltz.”Both show images of gender roles in their respective ways.

For many generations status has been the envy and the demise of many people. William Faulkner intriguingly depicts status, society, and the role of women in his short fiction “A Rose for Emily.” He implies status causes many upheavals in a community and demonstrates how the society of a region reacts to that status. He furthers his ideas with the thought of women as the instigators in a community and shows their inferiority to men. Emily is a woman that has had a hard life. Her family made it so that she was held in high regard in the public eye. She was not suppose to encounter relationships that were below her stature. The town, being the antagonist, drives Emily to her insanity because they will not allow her to lead a normal life, wishing her to follow the roles given to a woman of her status. She gives a split between gender roles and social roles because of these problems. She was expected to be the model lady for the town, yet when the days of her fathers passing came, she became the thing that the rest of the people shied away from, even after the help they tried to provide.

In “My Papa’s Waltz” the gender roles given were not to a female, but this time to a male, the golden days father figure if you will. When the line that read “You beat time on my head, With a palm caked hard by dirt”, came up, it showed me that the father is more than likely a blue collared worker and has been doing manual labor at his place of employment. We all could assume that he has been at work very recently, and more than likely afterwards went out with his buddy workers for a couple of drinks whiskey. He then comes home and “Waltzes” through the door to continue the waltz with his son. We often view the hard working father over labored father as either distant and cold, or a happy and yet violent drunkard, yet when we step back and look at what the male goes through in conditions such as construction or mining, it is understandable to feel a need of getting away.

Both “A Rose For Emily” and “My Papa’s Waltz” both give light on how strong gender roles seemed to persuade what people used to be like. Our time and age now is much different now with women leaving to jobs, more than one usually, and men staying at home taking care of the kids. The man does not have to be a blue collared worker to be a man, and the women doesn’t have to be a dainty weak being who needs to have someone to protect her. It is not a point to try showing that you are the head of the house anymore, because it has become a matter of bringing home the bacon. Once a man and women have gotten passed this small hindsight of gender roles, their lives become easier and more focused. Gender roles do not have a place in our society anymore, or at least in our country.

In summary, identity is the combination of how others experience us and how we experience ourselves. It is a sense of identifying and differentiating with certain groups of people, we have multiple roles and identities within society made up of many components such as age, sex, class, ethnicity and intelligence. More importantly it is the meaning the social world gives to our newly found identities that we attribute truth to. Which we take this all in, or I suppose internalize it as parts of our identity, we then can put aside the old gender roles and how they were viewed, such as the image of the everyday man who will work hard then go off to the nearest tavern to drink the night away before he spends time with family, or the print of a lonely woman, left only to fend for herself in a society that says, for her, it is impossible.