Gender Roles In 'Marks' By Linda Pastan

In “Marks”, Linda Pastan discusses the life of a woman who is constantly being judged on her actions as a wife and mother. It further attempts to detail her frustrations on the grades which her own family members give to her based on her performance. It is clear that they concern themselves more on how well she performed her roles rather than just being grateful that she did it for them, thus making the speaker feel rather unappreciated. Pastan used the metaphor of grades, along with tone, to effectively convey this sentiment. Through the idea of “dropping out” (line 12), the poem suggests that women should try to break free of the system and defy the traditional gender roles that it has placed upon them. The main conflict of the poem is that of a mother with her own family. They constantly judged her actions in the household, even giving her grades for her performance. In the poem, her husband gave her “an A for last night’s supper, an incomplete for her ironing, and a B plus in bed” (line 1-4), her son “says she is average” (line 5) and her daughter “tells her she passes” (line 10-11). Simply put, her husband uses an A-F system, her son uses a ranking system and her daughter uses a Pass/Fail system. This gives way to the controlling metaphor of the poem, the various grading systems that the family members used to evaluate the speaker. From here, it becomes evident that the title, “Marks,” refers to the grades received in school. It is probable that the author used these