Dead as a doormat: the Dead women

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.