Gender Roles In Uncle Chinh's Paradise Of The Blind

Lillie Devereux Blake, an American reformer and women's suffragist once said, “People share a common nature but are trained in gender roles,” Traditional gender roles in Vietnamese society are reflected in Paradise of the Blind, by Duong Thu Huong, through Hang and Que's relationships with male family members, specifically Uncle Chinh, and their interactions with expectations of the patriarchal society as a whole. Even as a developing country, Vietnam still highly values males, and has an extremely high rate of “son bias,” meaning more male children are born, and kept, than female children, and that male children are cared after more than female children. This high appreciation of males is due to the deep embodiment of traditional gender roles

“I looked at my uncle and spoke softly. ‘You should have told me about the family...I came thousands of miles to see you.’ Stupefied, he stammered a few unintelligible sounds and made a few awkward gestures,” (170). Standing up to Uncle Chinh must have required Hang to be very courageous, because as a male family member, her elder, a Communist official, and a man in general, Chinh is generally expected by society to maintain all the power over Hang. To demonstrate this power, Chinh had summoned Hang to Moscow frequently, only to have her help him out in some way. After many of these visits, Hang opposes Chinh’s absolute power by recognizing and challenging his self-centered and egotistical behavior. This recognition upsets the dynamic of the relationship between Hang and Chinh, and she leaves him in indignation. Hang’s questioning of Chinh’s false authority disputes the whole basis of traditional expectations of society, and her revealing his personal and social failures in terms of their relationship disrupts the foundation of their interaction with Vietnamese culture. Her confrontation of Uncle Chinh, and in turn of his sexist and traditional values, shows the ludicrosity of gender roles and traditional expectations in Vietnamese culture and

Hang is forced to give in to these expectations because she is a child and a female. Que also must concede to the traditional gender roles because male family members in her life hold significant power over her and her actions. However, Que sometimes opposes the expectations of patriarchy by breaking the mold and challenging the sexist norms that define her life. Hang also disrupts the roles created for her by society by standing up against sexism and opposing male family members, therefore breaking the basis of the Vietnamese patriarchal structure. Hang and Que interact with the traditional gender roles and expectations of Vietnamese society in different ways, challenging sexist notions and the traditional values that supposedly guided their futures. They opposed the traditional gender expectations set for them as females by re-defining the word itself. People are more than the words that define them. A woman is not just a woman, she is a full person; a communist official is not just that, but also a complete human being. The traditional expectations of society that define people, especially women, are confining and wrong because no human being fits into any categorical