Time and time again gender roles are played upon in novels and stories. In our
society and many others all over the world gender is crucial in how people or characters
are accepted in society. In Margaret Atwood's novel, Bluebeards Egg, Atwood uses
characters to reinforce socially accepted gender roles in a male dominated society. I will
focus on two short stories from Bluebeards Egg, the first Betty and the second Scarlet
Ibis. Both protagonists in Atwood's short stories are women who base their existence
entirely on the male figures in their lives. The time and place in both stories are crucial in
how the characters act in society and how they are accepted by the opposite sex.
Betty was a housewife during a period in the 1940's where society had cast
women into inferior roles pertaining to men. The men of the household were the bread
winners and the women stayed at home to take care of the house and children. Although
Betty and Fred had no children, Betty was an ideal housewife. "Betty had replaced her
walls with plywood and painted the inside bright yellow, and she'd made yellow-and-
white curtains for the kitchen, a print of chickens coming out of eggshells. She'd sewed
herself a matching apron from the left-over material." (Atwood, p.97) Betty's life
revolved around Fred. When Betty would chat with neighbors all she would talk about
was Fred, "how he liked his eggs, what size socks he took (Betty was a knitter), how well
he was doing at the office, what he refused to eat for dinner." (p.101) Betty, like so many
other women of the time lived and breathed for their husbands.
A comment made by most men in this time period was that "it was always the
women he called the fool." (p.108) Women were seen as foolish in male eyes because
with a male society how could man do wrong. Looking at
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