Introduction: Society has and probably always will influence the thoughts of people

around the world. Specifically society influences the roles of men and women in their
work, family, and relationships. They Flee From Me by Sir Thomas Wyatt, describes
how baffling it was to come across a woman who didnt fit the generic gender role she
was meant to fill. In the 1500s men were considered more important than women.
Women were merely pawns in a game of chess where men continued to make up the
rules. Women were thought to be disposable and interchangeable because every girl
was the same.
They Flee From Me by Sir Thomas Wyatt
They flee from me that sometime did me seek, with naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek that now are wild and do not remember that
sometime they put themselves in danger to take bread at my hand; and now they range
busily seeking with continual change. Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise
twenty times better; but once in special, in thin array after a pleasant guise, when her
loose gown from her shoulders did fall, and she me caught in her arms long and small;
and therewith all sweetly did me kiss, and softly said, Dear heart, how like you this? It
was no dream, I lay broad waking; but all is turned through my gentleness into a strange
fashion of forsaking; and I have leave to go of her goodness and she also, to use
newfangleness. But since that I so kindly am served, I would fain know what she hath
deserved.
Transition: Were all subject to the confinements of gender roles but its our
responsibility to break free of their restraints. In the 1800s, having a different opinion
about the roles of women was quite rare. Women had gained more civil rights since the
1500s but they were still expected to be quiet and obedient. Emily Dickinson was the
complete opposite. In the poem She Rose To His Requirement Dickinson challenges
the idea that women are obligated to give up everything for men.
She Rose To His Requirement by Emily Dickinson
She rose to his requirement, dropped the playthings of her life to take the honorable
work of woman and of wife. If aught she missed in her new day of amplitude, or awe, or
first prospective, or the gold in using wore away, it lay unmentioned, as the sea
develops pearl and weed, but only to himself is known the fathoms they abide.

Transition: From the minute youre born things are done for you or youre instructed to
do something in a certain way. This is necessary for your transition from baby to child to
teenager to adult, but the way youre taught to act affects how you view yourself and
how you carry yourself as you grow. From a young age, girls are taught to play with dolls
while boys are taught to build things or play with guns. As children were already being
conformed to comply with the widespread gender roles. Girls are taught to cook while
boys are taught skills for jobs to support their families. The way children are raised has
been passed down through generations and is hard to change. Only recently have
people begun to understand the implications that gender roles have placed on our
future generations. A slam poem titled Shrinking Women by Lily Myers gives us insight
into gender roles and the inequality of men and women through her personal
experience.
Shrinking Women by Lily Myers
Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that she drinks out
of a measuring glass. She says she doesnt deprive herself, but Ive learned to find
nuance in every movement of her fork. In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the
uneaten pieces on her plate. Ive realized she only eats her dinner when I suggest it. I
wonder what she does when Im not there to do so. Maybe this is why my house feels
bigger each time I return; its proportional. As she shrinks the space around her seems
increasingly vast. She wanes while my father waxes. It was the same with his parents; as
my grandmother became frail and angular her husband swelled to red round cheeks,
round stomach, and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking, making space for
the entrance of men into their lives, not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave. I
have been taught accommodation. My brother never thinks before he speaks. I have
been taught to filter. I want to say: we come from difference, Jonas, you have been
taught to grow out, I have been taught to grow in. You learned from our father how to
emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence. I learned to
absorb. I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself. I never meant
to replicate her, but spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up
their habits- thats why women in my family have been shrinking for decades. We all
learned it from each other, the way each generation taught the next how to knit,
weaving silence in between the threads which I can still feel as I walk through this evergrowing house, picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped like bits of
crumpled paper from her pocket Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the
dark, a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled. Deciding how many
bites is too many. How much space she deserves to occupy. Watching the struggle I
either mimic or hate her, and I dont want to do either anymore, but the burden of this

house has followed me across the country. I asked five questions in genetics class today
and all of them started with the word sorry. I dont know the requirements for the
sociology major because I spent the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have
another piece of pizza, a circular obsession I never wanted, but inheritance is accidental,
still staring at me with the wine-soaked lips from across the kitchen table.
Conclusion: Gender roles change how we perceive ourselves and limit what we are able
to achieve. We need to eliminate gender roles to free ourselves of the limitations that
come with them. Without gender roles men and women are one step closer to
becoming equals. Awareness of gender roles can help us to be the generation that
changes things for the better.