Working Mother and Stay at Home Father: An Analysis of Gender-Role Conflict in “The Weekend” by Fay Weldon
Keywords:
Fay Weldon, Gender Roles,, Gender Role Conflict, FeminismAbstract
One of the attributes of the contemporary society is the gender-role conflict and the consequent dissatisfaction among both genders. The same gets reflected in the relevant literature. This paper seeks to analyse the modern day dilemma of the unbalanced gender role divisions as portrayed in the short story titled Weekend by Fay Weldon. The short story Weekend addresses the topic through the story of Martha and Martin. While Martha is a working mother, Martin works from home. Much of the existing research on this short story has been with respect to the character of Martha and her apparent plight and although the story is Martha’s “stream of consciousness” the psychoanalytical reading is missing. This paper seeks to analyse gender role expectations and the resultant conflict which arises due to its disturbance. In order to make the analysis the paper has taken help from psychological studies done in the field with a special focus on Gender Role Conflict Theory (GRC) by James O’Neil. This paper would add to the research in the field of women studies with respect to the changes that have occurred in the roles assigned to them after the Enlightenment period in European context.
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