do so. While the men in the family, including Cory and Lyons, scatter, Rose stays and is the cement that keeps her family functioning.

To a large extent, Wilson's depiction of women are to have the unfortunate distinction of being with a man who is unreachable.  Both Alberta and Rose can claim the "honor" of being with Troy.  Yet, both are unsuccessful in reaching him.  They cannot permeate or enter his world where emotional fences are built in order to keep out the pain and, eventual joy, of life.  In this, the women are kept at a distance.  Both are able to develop other forms of life whereby Troy is not necessarily a part of such a process.  Alberta's preoccupation with her pregnancy, one that eventually kills her, and Rose's participation with her church are the refuges that each woman can take away from Troy, who cannot provide any substantive emotional connection to each. While Troy is not as bad as his father with abuse and while he does provide for them financially, meeting his responsibility, he is noticeably absent from his emotional duty to each.  Wilson presents a setting whereby the pain that men experience are equally, if not worse, than that which men endure.  In this, women are shown to be relegated to an area of periphery in the lives of men, one in which they can try to influence and show power.  Yet, in the end, the emotional fences that men build, fortified by years of social neglect and personal abuse, are ones that might be too strong of barriers for them to storm.

Black women living in the West have never really typified Western gender roles, given their dual burdens of domestic labor and employment outside of their own households, as well as the tendency to associate femininity more directly with white womanhood.

Rose's decision to remain with Troy after he confesses about his infidelity with Alberta, which results in the latter's pregnancy with Raynell, is probably the result of both her economic dependence on Troy as well as her sense that she has invested too many years into their relationship to walk away from him. Rose is a Pittsburgh housewife and, in this regard, is quite typical of her era. However, she sympathizes with the way in which Troy feels that he has been cheated by a racist system and never given a fair shot to become a baseball player. Her assertion of her commitment to him during her monologue attests to the unique role that many black women have played in their marriages to black men—a role in which they have not always been subordinate, as many white women of the era were, but in which they stood side-by-side in enduring racial oppression, taking comfort in each other:

I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life too. I gave eighteen years of my life to stand in the same spot with you. Don’t you think I ever wanted other things? Don’t you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me? Don’t you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good? You not the only one who’s got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams . . . and I buried them inside you.

In this speech, Rose confirms her commitment to Troy but also asserts the presence of her own carnal desires, something which women of that era were compelled to repress or deny out of social propriety. She did not avoid other men because it was more socially appropriate, but because she wanted to invest her desire into Troy. Wilson seems here to use Rose as an example of the way in which black women often make personal sacrifices to keep black families together. Through their personal commitments to their relationships and binding community rituals, such as going to church (Rose is also church-going), black women try to diminish the impact of the past, in which their families went unacknowledged and were routinely ripped apart by the slave system. Rose talks about how important it was for her to maintain a cohesive and more traditional family unit, which differed from her own, in which her and her siblings had different fathers. One could argue that her wish for a traditional nuclear family is also representative of the 1950s, though I would argue that this desire is more closely related to her need to build roots through family.

I think it's a perfect example of women in the 1950s.  After the war, women still found themselves in traditional roles but were slowly breaking out.  The war gave them a taste of another life.  They had the opportunity to become more independent.  Then the men came back, and they resumed their roles but slowly evolved them.

I think that the depiction of women in Wilson's work is a complex one. In one respect, I think that there is a definite statement that shows women to meet some of the traditionalist conceptions of women in the 1950s.  Both women do exert much in way of support of Troy.  While he is immersed in his own "emotional fences" and does not necessarily reflect much in way of male support to these women, they stand by him and do not outwardly repudiate him.  Throughout her interaction with him, Alberta is willing to share Troy with Rose, not appearing to make much in way of an apparent ultimatum that he sacrifice his marriage for her.  At the same time, Rose also stands with Troy and shows support for him.  These supportive roles of women are consistent with the traditional notion of how women in the domestic realm are constructed.

Yet, I would also suggest that Wilson does show women to be defiant of this vision at the same time.  It would be unrealistic to show the women in his work as being completely liberated from social constructions, so he shows them to be more complex than the reductive social vision that surrounds them.  While never seen in the play, Alberta must possess some level of strength that a traditional "woman on the side" does not necessarily hold.  "The other woman" is usually seen as one that lacks power and lacks the ability to hold on to the man because she is "the other woman" and must take whatever is offered.  Alberta is not like this because Troy is compelled to stay with her throughout the pregnancy and even after coming clean to his wife.  She exerts some type of hold on him and this reflects a power that the "other woman" traditionally lacks.  Rose is shown to be different than the traditional concept of woman, as well.  She is shown to be loyal to Troy, but also one who emotionally distances herself from him when the situation with him becomes untenable. She does not stay with him emotionally.  Rather, she involves herself with church and even the rearing of Raynell.  She has recognized that while she will not leave Troy or repudiate him, she will not emotionally surrender herself to him or the relationship.  This shows strength uncharacteristic of the traditional woman in the 1950s.