Acquainted The Night Gender Roles

Society has always lived under the constant pressure of being observed from a microscope; it has been applauded for every little detail and criticized for every little detail. The pressure comes from trying to appease all those that are watching, even though those opinions do not matter. So as the world has gotten smaller and smaller through the use of technology, the scrutiny has gotten even worse. Like a virus, these gender stereotypes have evolved to survive in the changing world. Through the years, expectations that have been put on men and women should have gradually deteriorated but they are far from extinction; even today, gender roles continue to control society and is always a constant threat. Nearly all countries are somewhat
patriarchal, the father is one the in the family to bring home the most money and, while the mother may have a job, her most important role is to play a big part on educating her children. Times have past and America has changed, it has evolved in that mothers are now leaving their aprons and suiting up for the outside world. However, women are still not seen equal to men. This change is only physical, in that society now accepts women but it still does not permit women being greater than men and men must never be inferior to women. The world has known how oppressed women have been for quite some time. Numerous amounts of plays, novels, articles, and scripts have plots in which the women were always an oppressed being. The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Gilman is one of the numerous creations touching on this subject. This story was written in 1892 and is about a depressed mother who goes insane from being greatly restricted and neglected. The story is written in her perspective as surreptitiously writes and hides her notes. The mother (the narrator) states “perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see, he does not believe I am sick!” (Gilman 233); “that” being John, her husband, is a physician. John does not believe that the narrator is sick and proclaims “she [the narrator] shall be as sick as she pleases!” (Gilman 239). Therefore, the narrator cannot help but feel terrible because no one believes her about her illness. John, as a doctor, believed that women were more prone to being emotional and could not help but to be overly sensitive. He believes that after a few days in bed, the narrator will be back to her usual self. In this relationship, John continues to put down the narrator. Not abusively, but he refuses to comply to her wishes and recommendations saying that her frail body would not be able to handle the stress. He believes that he knows what is best for her. The narrator was not only neglected and restricted but she was seen as a frail woman not even able to voice out her opinions. In the late 19th century, it was believed that women had a hysterical tendency, meaning that doctors believed women “had an innate tendency to be overly emotional” (233). According to Poirier, doctors believed that women were innately frail and, due to this, America even idolized and idealized “women that were deemed sickly and emotional creatures” (Poirier 16) as the epitome of femininity. Also, Poirier states that women had little to no voice and was barely given attention to when regarding their health (Poirier 16). Silas Weir Mitchell, the most reputable doctor at that time, wrote and gave counseling about a healthy womanhood to whoever visited his clinic. The counseling was to help exhausted women into regaining their strength. However, the remedy he had prescribed for these women was that they should leave the hard, exhausting work life behind and “reorient themselves to the domestic life” (Poirier 19). However, how does a male know more about how to have a “healthy womanhood” than a woman. His main ideology was that a “woman’s life was centered around her womb [and] that even if it wasn’t her only achievement in life, certainly woman’s greatest accomplishment and responsibility was to bear and rear children” (Poirier 19). In 19th century America, it was not only clear that women had no voice when it came to her aspirations, wants, needs, and her own body; women had no voice at all in the world of men.
However, there is another side to the coin of gender roles.
Women were not the only gender that was oppressed; men were choked with expectations that would leave their shoulders sagging with enormous burdens. The father must be the ultimate role model in the family, indestructible and imperviable to stress and emotions. Men were not allowed to show their emotions, crying was for the weak hearted and frail. In Robert Frost’s Acquainted with the Night, the poem is about a depressed man. The man states that he has become acquainted with the night, implying that he has been going on his nightly routine for a while. On his nightly walks, whenever the narrator makes eye contact with the watchmen, he “dropped his eyes, unwilling to explain” (Frost 1301). This action can be seen as embarrassment. This embarrassment is from the man losing his job. The man has “walked out in the rain – and back in rain” (Frost 1301) and has “outwalked the furthest city light” (Frost 1301) on his job search. As the person that must be the bread winner in the family, losing his job is the ultimate humiliation at this time in America. He, therefore, travels at night to avoid people questioning his walks. Frost also describes the setting to be stuck in time, as if everything was frozen or if time was trudging on slowly. This is because the man has no one to share his burden with and is stuck in the limbo of
purgatory.
The whole mood of the poem screams depressed.
As men were considered impermeable to illnesses, especially intangible mental illness. Even today, males struggle with accepting that they have been diagnosed with these illnesses because the idealized “traits such as toughness and strength may dissuade both women and men, and especially the latter, from identifying or acknowledging the signs of depression in men” (Swami). Further on, Swami states that “because of these societal expectations, men appear to have poorer understanding of mental health and aren’t as good at detecting symptoms of depression compared with women” (Swami). Because men do not know how to articulate their feelings into words except for a mere “I don’t know”, when asked about their feelings, because some “men don’t describe depression”
(Potash). It is now the 21st century and yet, gender roles still linger in people’s consciences. People are struggling daily with how they act because of how gender roles continue to survive.