Siddhartha can be seen through in a feminist perspective in many ways. One way that Hesse has undermined the social oppression of women was when Siddhartha asked only his father to run away and become a Samana. “ ‘Why are you waiting?’ asked his father. ‘You know why, answered Siddhartha. His father left the room displeased and lay down on his bed” (Hesse 10). His mother was not shown at all, she was just barely mentioned which shows how women are classified as a lower class than the male dominance in the book. An expert named Victor Gunasekara says “The Buddhists doctrine of rebirth asserts that gender can change over successive births. Thus in the ‘samsaric’ sense there is no male or female, but only a single karmic stream” (Gunasekara 1).