Sold By Patricia Mccormick

The novel Sold by Patricia McCormick takes place in Nepal and India, where a 13-year-old girl named Lakshmi is sold into a brothel and raped and abused. This place is where she finds herself at the most challenging point of her life so far. The reader is shown in the novel how men control women and how they have no power over their own lives.

Women lack control over their own lives because of men. The first time Lakshmi was getting raped, she described how the man was "holding [Lakshmi] down... He fumbles with his pants, forces my legs apart, and I can feel him pushing himself between my thighs. I gasp for air and kick and squirm. He thrusts his tongue in my mouth." (106). This is significant because it exhibits how men control Lakshmi. After

This issue is portrayed in the text when Lakshmi voices, "'What is it, Ama?' I say. Ama wipes her cheek with the hem of her shawl. 'Your stepfather has said you must go to the city and earn your keep as a maid'" (51). Ama didn't want Lakshmi to go away; hence her crying, but she didn't have a choice. Stepfather overran her opinion because he is 'the man of the house' and 'he runs the house' and gets to decide everything solely because of his gender. The right to make decisions isn't given to women merely because they are women. When Lakshmi was being sold to Bajai Sita, Stepfather, and Bajai Sita were setting a price for her, and he said, "'One thousand rupees,'… 'She has no hips,' I hear her say. 'And she's plain as porridge. I'll give you five hundred'… 'No less than eight hundred.' 'I will give you half now and the rest when she has proved her worth,' she says" (56). This excerpt displays how even though Bajai Sita did play some part in pricing, Lakshmi Stepfather had more influence over the pricing than Bajai Sita. Stepfather wanted one thousand rupees for Lakshmi, but Bajai Sita wanted five hundred, but the price ended up being eight hundred. Mathematically, Stepfather's request was closer to the final expense than Bajai Sita, showing how men had more authority regarding decision-making because of Stepfather's power over the