Female Desire In Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio presents an interesting story about the lives of the people inside Winesburg as well as focusing in on the character George Willard. This story is particularly interesting because a presentation on George’s transformation from being a boy into a man is included in the story. Winesburg, Ohio also includes information about religion and relationships inside the town. Relationships in this town are interesting because all of them seem to be dysfunctional in some way whether they are between lovers, spouses, friends, strangers, and God. Mark Whalan suggests that “the ‘man-woman thing’ was a career-long obsession for Sherwood Anderson” (229), and because of this, the failure of heterosexual relationships is what causes the grotesque nature in many of the inhabitants (Whalan 229), and Belinda Bruner suggests that despite the fact that Anderson was focused on this ‘man-woman thing,’ Anderson manages to “fail his female characters” (361).

To do this, I will look into what is considered female desire in the story and what is considered male desire in the story. As I move through different examples of desire in this book, I will focus on how the two desires interact with each other. In Winesburg, Ohio, male desire triumphs over all other desire, but just as female desire is presented has hard to control, males have trouble enacting their desire and explaining their desire to others. This inability to handle their desire properly and the flaws that are also present in female desire are what cause the impossible relationships in Winesburg,