Extra Credit

Paton characterizes the gender's differently by explaining that a woman in the city could not get a well payed job. He uses the quote, "These women sleep with any man for their price" (53) to show how the character Gertrude needs to become a prostitute to earn money for herself and her son. However, she ends up getting into a lot of trouble with illegal drugs and alcohol. She no longer knows where her son is ever second as a mother should. Paton uses this to show how he believes that a woman does not know how to take care of herself and is almost worthless compared to a man. What he does not let stand out is the way a woman is treated when she does try to get a descent job. For someone to have to sell themselves to others to just get by shows the disrespect men had for women back then. Becoming a prostitute was Gertrude's last choice she later points out. Her husband ran out on her and their child. Because woman have to stoop that low to earn money, men begin to believe that woman are even more useless. The tone Paton used in the quote shows the disgust men have for women in general.


Later on Paton uses the quote, "'It's easier for a mother, James'"(175), to show that men do not believe a woman's job is hard. All they see is the females stay at home all day. However a mother's job is said to be harder than any man's. In the book, the woman which are displayed before us are all stay at home mothers who must be gentle and sweet. Not once does Paton give us a character that is a strong woman who knows what she wants; where there no successful woman back then?


Paton used the whole book to show the effect of the gender differences. Women were never treated the same as men for as long as one can remember. Generation, after generation, women were said to be the weaker sex all around the world. Now a days, here in America, although we have women's rights, what was done and said for many years will never really change. Still women are put down by men. At times, a woman does not earn as much as a man with the same job. There will always be tension between the two sexes; they will always be rivals.


I do not believe this is fair. Alan Paton either wrote this book to show the unfairness of the situation, or he was on the men's side; threatened by the women of the world. Either way, this book does not stand for the unfairness of it all. It simply states the obvious.