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Kim Nai Taing

Professor Ditch

English 115

6 November 2017

Gender Roles Switched

Gender performance is a critical concept in the way it has served the purpose of keeping

the universe moving in constant. The expected role of a man and a woman is meant to

complement their specific biology. Together with their differences, the two genders are to

depend on each other for survival necessities. While this long gone tradition has held its

promises to rule how human beings live, there has been those who have objectified the roles of

the genders and do not see that their gender has, in anyway, defined how they go about their

lives. More importantly, this lack of identification in according to the gender norms do not stop

them from being managed to find the joy of life such as falling in love and living out their

dreams and passion. Two fictional characters that support this objection are in the novel, The

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Dawsey Adams and Juliet Ashton. Dawsey is an

independent farmer in the island of Guernsey. Juliet is a newspaper reporter from the city of

London. She holds the major obligation to figure out the situations of Guernsey after the Second

World War. To do so, she tries to build a relationship with the islanders of Guernsey. Juliet

shows a manly figure throughout her lifes circumstances since a child. Dawsey, similarly, is an

independent man but he has a timid and soft-spoken personality that could be described as very

feminine. All in all, Juliet is radical in her gender performance while Dawsey is both radical and

conforms to his gender performance.

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Juliet Ashton is radical in her gender performance in the way she handles situations with

great power and right intentions. She has never let female limitations take control of how she

should feel and act. She has grown up with an uncaring uncle after her parents auto accident

when she was 12. Her circumstances have not always been easy for the fact she has no one to

trust and rely on since such a young age. However, friends and loved ones she has come in

contact until her career are all deeply admired by her free-spirited and determined character.

More importantly, she takes no tolerance in being a woman to rely on a man. During her time

with her fiance, a man with great respect and wealth in the community, she found herself

miserable and trapped by the control of a man. For example, her fiance replaced her books on

their bookshelf with his sport trophies and endless rewards Juliet has never approved of. As an

immediate result, she found herself severely maddened by such behavior, causing her to expose a

violent reaction by throwing all his items out. This led to their breakup, one in which has caused

many rumors, often with Juliet as the guilty one. Her behavior could be best described in

Rhetoric and Radical as standpoint, A standpoint is your place in the world. We all have

standpoints that emerge from our personal, familial, educational, spiritual, racial, sexual and

class experiences (Gandio, 21). This proves the interference of a standpoint and social norms. It

is a prescribes social norm for a woman to be the house-wife and take care of the husband.

Therefore, Juliet is one of the many women who are unconditionally supportive of this approach.

It is an approach that has been laid out since the beginning of mankind, most appropriate to keep

the universe moving in constant. In Composing Gender, Aaron Devor supports, The social

hegemony of this ideology ensures that we are all raised to practice gender roles which will

confirm this vision of the nature of the sexes (Devor, 43). According to Devor, a woman is

supposed to dress, behave, and act to attract a male counterpart, whom figure represents
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aggressiveness and self-reliant in society. However, it is only to be objectified when Dawsey

Adams comes along into Juliet Ashtons life to say that his more-feminine-life performance does

not change the fact that together, they could create something beautiful.

Dawsey Adams is a man with a character who is well-respected by people around him

even though he is not manly as the expected role of society. For example, when Isola cleaned his

house, in purpose to confirm his love for Remy, Dawsey shows a feminine performance in the

way he keeps objects that remind him of Juliet such as pictures of Juliet and Kit, her letters, and

her handkerchief. Instead of being a man and shows Juliet his feelings for her, he keeps them

safe and protected. According to Composing Gender, Ruth Hubbard explains so to this action in

her article, Rethinking Womens Biology, No one has suggested that men are just walking

testicles, but again and again women have been looked on as though they were walking ovaries

and wombs (46). The fact that he hides his love proves a very feminine performance but it

shows no weakness or shame. However, he behaves how he does because of his natural being;

hence, although he is supposed to be more manly, he can be weak, overemotional, and at the

mercy of raging hormones. More importantly, being an independent man living in his pig farm,

he has learned for all required to replace the role of the woman in the house. On page 216 of The

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Dawsey is able to successfully show his

feminine performance a he cooks in the kitchen. He refuses to accept help from Juliet but does so

very well on his own. This means what it is to define gender is through the experiment of finding

oneself and never of social expectations. Everyone carries a different childhood or stage in life

and grow up with a view, often seen as strange due to the difference, not well-accepted by many

others. All in all, Dawsey is able to free himself from the suffocating and limiting...Thats

because social norms often sets limits for acceptable behavior (Jason Del Gandio, 20). For
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this reason, the foundation of social norms is a threat to how individuals view the world due to

its social construct. More importantly, to balance his unique character, Dawsey also displays his

masculine figure very often in his role. For example, in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel

Pie Society, Dawsey shows a very masculine performance as he helped Remy get to the hospital

after she was vomiting due to the sight of a dog that has attempted to give Dawsey a big,

slobbering kiss. In the article Becoming Members of Society: The Social Meanings of

Gender, of Composing Gender, Aaron Devor supports, The social hegemony of this ideology

ensures we are all raised to practice gender roles, which will confirm this vision of the nature of

sexes (43). Devor is claiming that women and men have hormonal instructions meant for the

purpose in social norms. This scene of Dawsey helping Remy portrays this claim by seeing a

women seeking support from a man. Over all, Dawsey shows both breaks free and conforms to

prescribed gender norms.

The characters, Juliet Ashton and Dawsey Adams, are two different people from separate

backgrounds and influences. The way they were brought up and the circumstances they have

gone through determine how they see and react to certain life situations. It has nothing to do with

neither one of them being a woman or a man. In a study done in the article, Negotiation

Courtship, by Ellen Lamont, aimed to describe courtship of 38 college-educated women whom

negotiate the contradictory belief of being the manly female in order to understand how and why

gendered courtship conventions persist even as heterosexual romantic relationships become more

egalitarian. Lamont quotes, These findings demonstrate that, to ease the conflict between a

desire for equality and a persistence of conventional courtship rituals, women conclude that the

symbolic gendering of courtship does not contribute to the perpetuation of gender inequality. It

is interesting to find although women put themselves in the mens shoes such as being the man
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of the relationship, it does little to fix gender inequality. More importantly, Young Children

Enforce Social Norms, by Marco F. H Schmidt and Michael Tomasello, claims otherwise,

People may follow social norms for external reasons (e.g., to avoid sanctions), but peoples

enforcement of social norms suggests some kind of prosocial motivation toward, or identification

with, their group and its lifeways, and a motivation to preserve thema kind of group-

mindedness. This means to say that young children could be following their parents and

understand that the way a game is played is, in a sense, an agreement that can be changed, not

something written in stone. At one point, people would eventually come to their senses and

think for themselves; following and knowing social norms are only a way to respect the authority

and participate in this collective intentionally. For this reason, Juliet Ashton is a child who has

proven that social norms is no importance to tell her how to live accordingly. As well as Dawsey,

he both breaks free from his gender performance in his role to replace a woman figure in his life

by learning how to work well around the house along with his masculine performance working

in the farm and a civilized man in the community of Guernsey.

In conclusion, Juliet Ashton performs is radical in her gender performance. She went out

of her way from her unfortunates to follow her passion and make her dreams a reality. She never

takes a no as an answer because she has the mentality of being her own leader of her thoughts

and feelings. Her level of self-love is beyond the expectation of social norms to ever second-

guess herself. Her lover, Dawsey Adams both manages to both break free and conform to

prescribed gender roles. From his natural being as a young man living on his own in the farm, it

is no surprise he fills the gap of the woman role. From moving around the kitchen in a well-

behaved manner to hiding his feelings in a romantic way, he has all the emotional state of mind

of a woman at the least. At the same time, he is also plays a masculine performance as he is one
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strong hell of a man with a big heart. Such as helping Remy get to the hospital, he has always

played the manly role of the situation if needed. These two characters in love prove the the

ideology that social norms plays no guarantee into living out that ideal life and living life to the

fullest. All in all, though how different and similar they are in their gender performance, they go

through all odds to complement in each others lives and begin a new chapter of their lives

together.
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Works Cited

Gandio, Jason Del. Rhetoric for Radicals: a Handbook for 21st Century Activists. New Society

Publishers, 2008.

Groner, Rachel, and John F. O'Hara. Composing Gender: a Bedford Spotlight Reader.

Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014.

Schmidt, Marco F. H, and Michael Tomasello. "Young Children Enforce Social Norms."

Current Directions in Psychological Science 21.4: 232-36. Web.

Shaffer, Mary Ann, and Annie Barrows. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Dial Press Trade Paperback Edition, 2009.

Lamont, Ellen. Negotiating Courtship. Gender & Society, vol. 28, no. 2, 23 Sept. 2013, pp.

189211., doi:10.1177/0891243213503899.