We've talked at length about the differences between the
Dead household and Pilate's house. Besides everything else, one of those is the
role women play. Obviously, Pilate's household is made up entirely of women. In
Macon's house, the women seem to mostly be "seen and not heard", with
the exception of Ruth when she's trying to passive-aggressively taunt Macon.
Until the very end of the first section of the book, Lena and Corinthians
function more as living props/background than actual people. Lena, Corinthians,
and Ruth all lead very "small" lives, never stepping out of their
little domestic turf. (Of course, at the end of the first section we get to see
that Lena and Corinthians, even more than Milkman, are beginning to assert
themselves and break away from their parents. Reading that chapter was super
satisfying because I spent most of the book to that point thinking that the
sisters couldn't actually be as
doormat-like as they seemed.)
When the Dead women do retaliate,
they usually do it in small ways too: Ruth won't actually confront Macon, but
she tells innocent-seeming stories to frustrate him, and she
passive-aggressively fights with him over Milkman. Corinthians starts going out
with Robert Porter and lies to her parents about her job, but doesn't fight
Macon when he finds out about it. Milkman and Corinthians both defy Macon, but
the ways they do it fit gender stereotypes: Macon defies his father by
attacking him directly, but Corinthians does it by dating a man he doesn't
approve of. (Reading about her was super frustrating to me because I just
wanted Corinthians to get away from her family and actually have an adult life
but no, that doesn't happen) Neither Ruth nor Corinthians are willing to
actually stand up to the men in their lives, and stop once they're called out.
Lena's rebellion is perhaps the
most overt and "masculine" of the Dead women's: she confronts Milkman
directly and tells him what a shitty person he is. The wording she uses (saying
that he "pees all over them") highlights Milkman's masculine
privilege in the family: women typically don't/can't (literally) piss all over
things. It's true, in a way: Macon gives Milkman the respect that he doesn't
give his wife or his daughters, without Milkman having to work for it like they
do. Milkman doesn't seem to see his sisters or mother as full people, and takes
his sisters especially for granted. He totally disrespects Corinthians when he
tells Macon about her relationship with Porter. If he wanted her to stop seeing
him, he could have talked to her about it instead of going to Macon. Even
though she probably wouldn't have taken it well, it would be more respectful to
her. Instead, Milkman shows her just how mouch she, a fortysomething-year-old
woman, is under the control of her father. (As I'm writing this, I realize that
there could be another reason for why Milkman went directly to Macon: if he'd
talked to Corinthians about it, she probably wouldn't have believed him, and so
going to Macon was the only way he could definitely shut down the
relationship.)
I agree with much of what Lena said
to Milkman: even though it isn't usually intentional, he takes his mother and
sisters for granted and walks (pees?) all over them in the first part of the
book. I really, really didn't like Milkman for most of the book, because he
spends most of it totally unaware of other people's feelings. He almost reminds
me of Meursault like that - he just kind of goes along and has superficially
pleasant relationships with people, but doesn't really understand how they're
thinking and feeling.
