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Gender In Ainsley's Ashes

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In order to understand this scene, it is important to realize Ainsley’s motivation for her performance. Previously in the novel, she exposes to Marian her desire to have a baby. But Marian attempts to talk her out of it, particularly because Ainsley is determined to have a child without marriage however, Ainsley states that “The thing that ruins families these days is the husbands,” (EW 42). Furthermore, Ainsley told Marian that, “‘Every woman should have at least one baby.’ She sounded like a voice on the radio saying that every woman should have at least one electric hair-dryer. ‘It’s even more important than sex. It fulfills your deepest femininity’” (EW 43). Afterwards Marian asks her, tongue-in-cheek, “But what about a father for it? I …show more content…

By demonstrating that femininity is a performance required of a female subject, Ainsley’s accurate performance of femininity elucidates how the strict regulations of gender norms inform one’s actions. As noted earlier, in order to get what she believes the regulatory ideal demands of her: a baby is forced into this performance. Also in this scene, Atwood’s own voice takes part in re-citation as well as Atwood uses Marian to indicate the humorous and ironic performance of Ainsley’s gender. Ainsley moreover expresses the necessity of babies as if they were hair-dryers. Using Marian’s tongue-in-cheek interpretation of Ainsley’s actions, Atwood by using language to indicate the absurdity of the gender performance, re-cites the discourse of gender norms (Fleitz 19).

Throughout Ainsley character in the novel the readers understand that even though she is first presented as someone not following the norm, nevertheless, she ends up following the role society expects her to play. Her development point out that to liberate oneself from the restrictions of societal expectations, one has to do more than just be willing to defy them. In order to be part of a society, one should rise to accept some norms as inherent therefore, Ainsley accepts these social norms as universal truths without questioning them (Guillain and Ruider

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