Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck - Nellie Y. McKay (essay date 1990)

Nellie Y. McKay (essay date 1990)

SOURCE: McKay, Nellie Y. “‘Happy[?]-Wife-and-Motherdom’: The Portrayal of Ma Joad in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.”¹ In New Essays on The Grapes of Wrath, edited by David Wyatt, pp. 47-69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

[In the following essay, McKay examines the ways in which the women in The Grapes of Wrath subvert stereotypical gender roles.]

Women's social roles in western culture are central concerns in contemporary feminist criticism. The discourse focuses on the idea that our society is organized around male-dominated sex-gender systems that admit two genders, that privilege heterosexual relationships, and that embrace a sexual division of labor in which wife and mother are the primary functions of women.² In such works as Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich,³ Man's World, Woman's Place by Elizabeth...

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