Gender Roles In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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When life used to rely on the strong, men were genetically dominant over women, but now life relies on the intelligent and innovative. Although anyone can be intelligent, there are significantly fewer women than men who have power in the world. The book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck shows the consequences of not questioning traditional gender roles. There are also people who try to fight back against the traditional gender roles like Emma Watson and her speech known as The He for She speech as well as Chimamanda Adichie’s book, We Should all be Feminists. There are many dangerous occurrences that will happen if gender stereotypes are not questioned because it promotes women inferiority compared to men, which will cause men to have more …show more content…

Since men set the expectations for women very high, it forces women to want to become perfect. To do so, women have given up many things they want to do. In Emma Watson’s speech, she states, “When at 15 my girlfriends started dropping out of their sports teams because they didn’t want to appear ‘muscly’”(Watson 1). There are many consequences for women because they need to sacrifice many things they like to do just to appear perfect to men. Similarly, Curley’s wife changes the way she looks because of men. In Of Mice and Men it states, “She wore her bright cotton dress and the mules with red ostrich feathers”(Steinbeck 84). Curley’s wife wears clothing not suited for a farm for a reason. She wears these types of clothing because it is the only type of clothing that will make men notice her. Although Curley’s wife is lucky because she was able to be pretty, others might not be able to reach which can lead to people wanting to reach perfection at any costs, even if it hurts them in the process. Overall, women should not have to change themselves for men to notice them. Men should like women for who they are and not for how they

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