Are Gender Roles Fluid When Dealing with Death and Tragedy?

...

The tale concludes after many years have passed, and no one in the town have heard or seen Miss Emily. Her death occurs, and she is buried. After an acceptable amount of time, a group of townspeople come into her domain, and force open a door to a deserted room in the house. The room’s contains a chilling scene: dusty and dated toiletries, furnishings set out for a wedding, and the rotting body of Homer Barron dressed in a nightshirt. Next to him in bed, upon a pillow, is the indentation of another person’s head, and one long gray hair, which the reader assumes belonged to Emily.

Emily’s reaction to the death of Homer Barron is more typical of her sex, and the opposite of her response to the death of her father. Killing Homer and keeping his body in her bed was, she imagined, a way of placating her family and its broad social extension—which objected to continuing fornication—without relinquishing him and her relationship with him. Emily chose, therefore, to enter into collusion with society to the extent of maintaining her image as a proper high-class southern lady.

The story “A Small, Good Thing” introduces a soon-to-be eight-year-old boy named Scotty. In the beginning of the story, his mother, Ann, is ordering a cake to celebrate her son’s upcoming birthday. While on the way to school on his big day, tragedy stuck, and he is accidentally hit by a car, whose driver drives away from the scene. Ann and her husband, Howard, react swiftly, rushing him to the hospital after he was unable to be awoken, and a medical frenzy of care is performed on their son. Howard’s initial reaction to the tragedy can be seen as extremely typical of most men: he seems to be in a state of denial, as if the shock had not reached him yet mentally. In a flashback while driving home from the hospital, he recollects his past, recounting that

he has not truly ever struggled in life. His professional life was always successful, having completed school and graduate school quite easily, and securing a junior partnership at his investment firm. He comes to the realization that there are struggles and strife that have the capabilities of crippling a person and hold them down, and until the accident, he was fortunate to have had the opportunity to avoid them. He seemed quite unsure how to proceed with the new found tragedy, and lashes out in a fit of anger over a telephone call received when he returned home from the hospital. Unknowing to Howard, it is the baker who is calling the family nonstop, expecting payment for the now deceased Scotty’s cake. The baker continues to call repeatedly throughout the story. His eerie silences and abusive invectives against what he mistakes as his customers’ irresponsibility effects an unsettling symbolic transformation. The cake, which was once a symbol of a celebratory marking of time, becomes an ironic reminder of human powerlessness in the face of time (Schweizer, pg. 139).

On the other hand, Ann deals with Scotty’s death in the opposite way. She refuses to leave his side while he is in the hospital, eventually being coaxed out by her husband. Ann claims that “Maybe if I’m not just sitting right here watching him every second he’ll wake up and be all right. You know? Maybe he will wake up if I’m not here.” (Schweizer, pg. 142). She begins to bargain with herself, trying to make sense of the accident, which shows her fluidity in gender roles when dealing with a tragedy. She eventually states coldly after Scotty’s death that the two of them will now be alone, coming to the stark realization that there is no positive resolution to the accident despite her optimism. In the end of the story, both Ann and Howard confront the baker,

explaining what happened to their son, and the baker prepares a meal for the now- childless parents, comforting them in a way, and optimistically showing that their lives will move on, although they will never be the same again.

“A Small, Good Thing” as a whole is not so much about death and tragedy as it is about the reactions of people and how they relate their experiences of morbidity to others. The story is a classic view of gender fluidity: the description of dealing with the death of a loved one to people who do not know the children who are spoken of and will not be able to know them because the children in question will die before such an opportunity will present itself.

The main character in “Story of an Hour”, by Kate Chopin, is Louise Mallard, an older woman who receives news of her husband, Brentley’s untimely death in a train accident. Louise’s initial reactions to the sudden passing of her husband can be described as an example of how women generally deal with death. Louise at first responds to the news with weeping with “sudden, wild abandonment”, and evicting herself from the premises to the privacy of her room. The feelings of “being pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” are vividly described in the story (Cunningham, pg. 85). The fears of continuing on her own are at first horrifying to her, and were described as a “storm of grief”, bringing on the use of dark symbolism and gloomy feelings that usually accompany death. The main character never describes her marriage in such a dark way, but subtly mentioning that Brently “never looked at her save with love.”

Suddenly, Louise seems to turn a complete 180 degrees in her reaction. After a brief moment of solitude, Louise seems to disprove every normal reaction that is common of her gender. The self-actualization that life will continue to move on despite her husband’s death is the climax of the story. Louise looks out of the window, and the sky shows patches of blue between white clouds, not the typical bleak and dreary clouds that usually accompany any discussions of death. The imagery used of a storm passing, as well as mentions of “the new spring life, the delicious breath of rain, the street caller, the open window, the open square” show feelings of optimism, positivity, and hopefulness.

Ultimately, this causes her to view the death as an opportunity to become a part of life in ways she has never lived before. She will no longer be considered just “Mrs. Mallard”, but can proceed as Louise, her own person. She repeats the words “free” repeatedly to remind herself of the fact that she has been released from the shackles of a bleak situation, and is overcome with elation about what is to come in the future.

The very beginning of the story touched upon Louise’s physical health upon, subtly mentioning that she has a heart ailment, which could be considered foreshadowing, and is the reason for her sudden and untimely death. Although the doctor who examines Louise