Walter Mitty vs. the Necklace Essay Example

An Escape 2 Gender roles and marriages can play an important role in literature. It can be one of the most influential ways that gender roles are constructed. Works of literature construct images of boys and girls and men and women. These works usually depict the girls and women doing housework, playing with dolls, and cooking. The men are usually depicted as sports players and lovers, providers, and figures that are overall stronger than woman. Guy de Maupassant’s, “The Necklace” and James Thurber’s, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” are two works of literature that focus on the themes gender roles and marriage, with some similarities, but with even more differences. In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” Thurber shows a marriage that is not typical. In this marriage Walter has a wife who is controlling, bossy, and runs the house hold. She’s aggressive, overbearing, and condescending. She’s everything Walter, the husband, is not. In comparison, Walter is very passive and compliant. This type of gender role reversal is quite unique considering that Thurber has given Mrs. Mitty the character traits are generally expected of the man or husband to possess, and Walter has the traits usually given to women. “The Necklace” Maupassant focuses on femininity. He develops a character as a woman who possesses all the attributes needed to be desirable by other men. “She had no dresses, no jewelry, nothing. And she loved nothing else; she felt herself made for that only. She would so much have liked to please, to be envied, to be seductive and sought after (as cited in Clugston, 2011, para.6).” She’s in a marriage where she does not care for her husband and hates the house in which she resides. Because she is a
An Escape 3 woman and is living a world where men are dominating, she has absolutely no control over her life. The author played upon feminine characteristics making Mathilde overly emotional and extremely sensitive. Ultimately, these