Male and Female Roles

The role of women in this book is very interesting. There are three couples in the story. There is one old couple, Anowa and her husband Kofi, and Anowa's parents. Anowa is constantly referenced as being strange. She even thinks herself to be abnormal. But I don't think she is the only one. She and Kofi seem to be the inverse of their traditional gender roles. Kofi seems to actually love Anowa, as he is content with her being his only wife and wants her to be the one that he spends the rest of his life and has his children with. Anowa, however, wants to live her own life and wander. Children are not her first priority and she would rather stay home and work. I think that they are interesting characters because they don't ascribe to traditional gender roles, yet they are the main characters. It makes reading the play a different experience than the one we have had so far, simply because the characters are completely different to any characters we had encountered up to this point.

I think that all of the male characters in the play are different than the ones in the books we have read so far. They are usually quite laid back and they enjoy working but seem to mostly be sitting around and they stay stationery. They seem to defer to the women more than any of their previous counterparts. They definitely appreciate their wives and know that their lives wouldn't be able to function without them. It's quite interesting to read, because the story is set in the 1800's and yet there seems to be more equality among the genders than we've seen in history at the time and the stories we've read.

The women are quite opinionated and feisty. They know what they want to do and often inform their husbands as a sort of afterthought. They are aware of the position that their society has placed them in, but it seems that they have adopted their posts so completely that ideas of their social standing seem to come straight from the women.