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Green Gables Gender Roles

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Gender Roles Portrayed In Anne Of Green Gables In Anne of Green Gables written by Lucy Maud Montgomery, there is a strong portrayal of gender perspectives. Each woman within the story including Anne and Marilla ascribe a different gender role. Throughout this essay, we will discus these gender roles and how or why they may be different or similar. Marilla tries perfectly to perform feminity where as Anne, it does not come as natural. This creates the question, is femininity natural, or something someone constantly works towards? Why Anne Makes us Dizzy: Reading Anne of Green Gables from a Gender Perspective written by Julia McQullian and Julie Pfeiffer, is a scholary article that analysis and critiques the gender roles and perspectives portrayed …show more content…

She believes women and young girls should act a certain way, think a certain way and dress a certain way. Marilla believes men and women are very different and there is no overlapping between their two roles. To her, “boys and men do farm chores; girls and women cook, clean the home, sew and entertain (McQuillan, Pfeiffer).” This is why Marilla and Matt wanted to adopt an orphan boy. They wanted someone to help Matt with the labour involved on the farm, and because of the “sexual divison (McQuillan, Pfeiffer),” a female child would not be able to do this work. This divison stems from the idea that women are built for only some type of work and men are built for the another type of work, which is also still prevalent in today’s society. We see Marilla struggle with Anne throughout the novel because Anne does not follow Marilla’s gender beliefs. Therefore, we see Marilla trying to “train” Anne to be more feminine and “lady like.” Within the book, we find multiple events where Marialla is trying to change Anne’s behaviour to be more socially acceptable. We constantly see her telling Anne to be a “good little girl,” multiple times throughout the novel. This statement has the underlying message to Anne to be behaved, polite, respectful and generous, as Marilla believes all young girls should behave. Marilla uses this phrase multiple times including when she

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