Gender Stereotypes Influence Perception of and Attitude Towards Characters Kali Elizabeth Goding College

The world has constructed itself around a mainly patriarchal view. This view of a patriarchy is altered from country to country to country, but it has its roots in the same idea: men over women. This idea forced people to compartmentalize gender into a binary vision. Someone is a man, or they are a woman. There is no in between, no middle ground. Certain attributes and personality traits were, over time, assigned to each binary gender. In Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones, the patriarchally assigned binary gender traits are challenged through the dichotomy of Raleigh’s soft-hearted nature and Gwendolyn’s intense independence in order to provide commentary on the notion of binary gender.

This is immediately evident in Gwendolyn’s character from the moment Dana introduces her. The first comments on Gwendolyn are characterized by the idea that, “to call her only [James’s] “wife” doesn’t really explain the full complexity of her situation” (Jones, p. 4). Gwendolyn should, by common American patriarchal society, be labelled with one of two names based on her position in the novel: a wife or a whore. Society dictates that a woman married to a man must be his wife. According to how Alan G. Johnson analyses the gender of women in his...