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Sex Discrimination In Thornton Wilder's Our Town

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Thornton Wilder's Our Town comes in for its share of negative criticism. Most stringent are comments about his refusal to deal with controversial elements of Grover's Corners — particularly bigotry, alcohol abuse, and sex discrimination. He seems to gloss over the segregation of Polish and Canuck citizens, who appear to reside in a lesser section of town across the tracks, where the Catholic Church is located. Like the three families with Cotahatchee blood, the non-WASP residents of the town seem to blend harmlessly into the landscape — out of sight and out of mind.

In similar fashion, Wilder seems unwilling to tackle the larger question of Simon Stimson's alcoholism and resulting suicide, which receives pointed but benign acknowledgment from …show more content…

Indeed, while parceling out meaningful work to his male characters, he anchors his female characters within the stifling backwaters of "woman's work," notably schoolteaching, child care, housework, and farm chores. Both Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibbs depict marital relationships which are obviously onesided affairs in which the husband dominates the decision-making process. And Mrs. Gibbs willingly allows her husband to select the destination of family vacations and to browbeat her about her evening at church as though she were a child needing his permission to be out on the town streets after dark. On the other hand, women were still disenfranchised in 1901 and did not obtain the right to vote until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. Therefore, the acquiescence of Julia Gibbs, Myrtle Webb, and Emily Webb Gibbs to housewifely anonymity seems appropriate to the time and place. It is, by today's standards, unfortunate that George is privileged to make the decision not to go to college while Emily — who is a demonstrably more promising scholar — seems not to have the same choice. Still, young women of Emily's day, particularly those in rural locales, were fortunate just to finish high

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