Chapters 1-9: Family Discussion Reflection

Part I: Research

Topic: Role of women in the 1930s
Summary: The effects of the Great Depression were felt differently by women than by men. While men were used to being the breadwinners and felt like failures for no longer being able to provide for their families, the woman's role increased as household chores suddenly became the only chores that mattered. The United States never would have survived the financial crisis of the Great Depression had it not been for the brave and determined women who were the backbones of their families during troubled times.
Evaluation: In Chapters 1-9, the role of women in The Grapes of Wrath seems resigned to watching the men and waiting for them to decide what to do. However, the text makes it clear that during the time period in which The Grapes of Wrath was written, women's importance in society was actually increasing rather than decreasing.
Citation:
Ware, Susan. "Women and the Great Depression." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, May 2012. Web. 01 Dec. 2013. <http://gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/great-depression/essays/women-and-great-depression>.

Part II: Philosophical Questioning

Do you believe in the idea of a "strong female character"?
How has the role of women changed in the past 75 years? Has it changed?
Do gender relations portrayed in literature usually mirror those in real life? How or how not?

Part III: Reflection

The most memorable moment of my discussion with my dad was during our conversation about my third question. I was explaining to him how I thought it was interesting that in The Grapes of Wrath, which is written by a male author, the female characters are given such little importance (particularly in the first five chapters) despite the empirical information from the article I read describing how the role of women in society actually improved during the Great Depression. We started trying to think of other books that similarly had skewed images of the role of women when my dad brought up Gone With the Wind as a counterexample of a novel that does in fact have a strong female character—and we both realized at the same time that Gone With the Wind was written by a female author. I think that this was the most memorable part of the discussion because of the windows it opened up for me into the facts of gender equality both in the past and in today’s literature. One of the most satisfying things to me about the discussion with my dad was how he respected my questions. I was afraid that he would think that they were stupid or made no sense, but he engaged with each one as best he could and we ended up having a much more fulfilling conversation than I would have thought possible. I was especially satisfied by the fact that he also felt comfortable enough to ask me some of his own questions, instead of just keeping the discussion in an interview-like format. I think that my questions could definitely be improved by not relying on so much outside knowledge. I realized during our discussion that it was unfair to expect my dad to know every single thing about 1940s literature, or even the role of women in the early 1900s. In the future, I will continue to ask what I feel to be interesting and thought-provoking questions, but I will try to rely more heavily on moral or ethical topics as opposed to ones based heavily in history.