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A Raisin In The Sun Gender Roles Essay

656 Words3 Pages

At first, a Raisin in The Sun may seems like an ordinary, flat play. Once you look into the story, written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, you find the deeper rooted lines. The play takes place before WWII, and she covers the racial and gender discriminations the main character's experience. A Raisin in the Sun goes against society's ideas of gender roles. The main characters consist of three women living in a house with two men. Walter, who is the oldest doesn't fit the role of head of the house at all, compared to the strong and independent Mama Younger. Benetha is Walter’s sister, who Walter tries to shut down with his own power, but fails and Benetha’s dreams pulls through.
Mama Younger’s role in the house is different from any other thing one would’ve seen from the time period of 1959. Hansberry portrays Mama as an older, stronger, wiser woman. She runs the house, owns the house, handles the money and watches over the rest of the family. Unlike Walter in the play, Mama cares more about the family. “When the world gets ugly enough – a woman will do …show more content…

From the storyline, however, he definitely doesn’t fit the criteria. Walter starts out in the beginning by being crude to his wife. Walter started defying Ruth’s actions, when Ruth denied giving their son extra money he “(Without even looking at his son, still staring hard at his wife) [said] In fact, here’s another fifty cents…Buy yourself some fruit today – or take a taxicab to school or something!” (Act I, Scene i). And that is just one example of one of Walter’s faults. As the head of the house, you should also support your family. He ends up wanting to look for peace, skipping his working hours to go hang out around town and drink when his family doesn’t know. When the family finds out, they all are in disbelief - Mama responds “It’s dangerous son [...] when a man goes outside to look for peace” (Act I, Scene ii) with disgrace in her

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His values were, and remain, centered around his own ideas and disregard all the ideas of the others who he claims to be acting in the best interest for. While in most situations the loss of all his money, the chaos in his family, and the prospect of living in a part of town where his family is not wanted would make the self proclaimed “man of the house” step up and take control, notice his wrong doings. Instead Walter remains in the dark and continues his ways without looking back, leaving the reader to assume further on into their life these problems will

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Lord have mercy, where is my plant?”(Hansberry, 149). This shows Mama is happy because they are moving into the house and she wants everybody to look representable. Therefore, Mama was so impressed with Walter and so happy that Walter chose to keep the house

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In the play, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, there are many examples of sexism throughout its entirety. The character, Walter, demonstrates the acts of a sexist human being. Walter is sexist to not only women in general, but to the women in his family. Not taking into consideration of other people’s sayings and their feelings, Walter generally only thinks about himself, says what he believes, and truly only cares about money. Walter constantly is fighting with all of the women in the family as well.

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Gender roles play an important role in A Raisin in the Sun. During the time A Raisin in the Sun was written the idea of set in stone positions in a household and society were common. Women were supposed to do house jobs, keep their mouths shut, and support their husbands’ decisions and men were seen as the headman or boss. A Raisin in the Sun shows readers a window into the world where those gender roles have a twist on them. Women in the time of A Raisin in the Sun were supposed to be subservient to men.

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