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Gender Roles In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

698 Words3 Pages

Communities, traditions, and gender roles are some of the few characteristics of human life that have persisted into modern times after being established during the Paleolithic era. Throughout the millenniums, those three key aspects of human life have become prominent and essential features of countless societies and civilizations. With the importance that those three human developments possess, it is no question why Jackson chose to place them under the spotlight and make the vital components of her short story. Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery” uses the custom of the lottery to convey the underlying message that although some traditions can be negative, they influence communities and establish gender roles. Shirley Jackson’s …show more content…

In the middle of the short story, jackson hints at the patriarchy present in the village when Mr. Summers instructs “now I’ll read the names-heads of family first- and the men come up and take a paper out of the box” (29). To clarify, Mr. Summer reports that the men, who are the heads of the families, will come up and take a paper out of the box when their names are called. With this quote, Jackson makes it clear that there is a patriarchy in the village that grew out of the tradition of the lottery since only men are able to draw from the box and she cements that idea by calling the men the heads of the family. The reader can translate the title of the head of the family as the person who has the most control and power over the rest of the integrants of the family. Therefore, the lottery in Jackson’s short story set up a patriarchy in village. One real world civilization that had a similar gender system to that of the village was the city-state of Athens in ancient Greece. There was a very obvious patriarchy present Athens and in Greece in general. Men were considered the heads of their families, just like in the short story. In addition, women in Athens had to be represented by a male guardian when it came to legal matter, much like how women had to be represented by their husbands during the lottery.
Overall, Jackson uses the lottery in her short story to reveal the

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