Calpurnia Tate Gender Roles

Jacqueline Kelly’s book “The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate” takes place during the hot summer of Texas in 1899, Calpurnia; the main character, is trying her best to stay cool, so she decides that she will cut off one inch of her hair each week. She makes many discoveries, goes on adventures with her grandpa, and most of all, she strongly dislikes her “girlish” roles. One lesson that the story suggests is that even though specific genders have their own roles, it's actually okay if you want to do things that are unspecified for your gender.

One example of how she doesn't like doing girly things, was when Calpurnia’s mother called her from her room to the kitchen to learn how to bake apple pie, while calpurnia has no intentions of learning how to do that. “There's no need to look like that, it's only a cooking lesson.” (Kelly, 223) This is apparent because Calpurnia only wanted to read her book and learn more about science.

Another example of how Calpurnia doesn't like to do girly things happens when Calpurnia is finished baking the pie and her brother, J.B. walks in and asks if he could learn how to make a pie. Her mother continues to say “No J.B. boys don't make pies… they have wives

Some Things she does is explore the woods and try discovering new species of plants, insects, and other “mootants” as Calpurnia calls them. She makes discoveries including her “yellow grasshopper,” which actually ended up not being a new species after all. She and her grandpa actually made a new discovery of a new species of Vetch, all though she did forget to write the location of where it was found and sort of beat herself up for that. However, even though this isn't what she should be doing in her free time, it does make up a huge part of who she is and how the book ends. Therefore, Calpurnia enjoys doing her own thing and spending time with her grandpa