Gender Roles : Gender Barriers In Fences, By August Wilson

In the 1950s, African American women had been framed in the role traditionally as good wives and mothers. They are more likely to openly express their difficulties in the role of a housewife and constantly being dominated by men. Rose in Fences was a typical example of the women’s roles at that time. In the soon display of the Act 1 scene 1 of, the reader can see Rose under Wilson’s description pen as

August Wilson did not name his play, Fences, simply due to the melodramatic actions that take place in the Maxson household, but rather the relationships that bond and break because of the “fence”. The “fence” serves as a structural device because the character's lives are constantly changing during the construction of the fence. The dramatic actions in the play strongly depend on the building of the fence in the Maxson’s backyard. Fences represents the metaphorical walls or fences that the main characters are creating around themselves in order to keep people in or vice versa. The title may seem straightforward, but in actuality it is a powerful symbol which can either have positive or

Fences written by August Wilson is an award winning drama that depicts an African-America family who lives in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania during the 1950’s. During this time, the Mason’s reveal the struggles working as a garbage man, providing for his family and excepting life as is. The end of segregation began, more opportunities for African American people were accessible. Troy, who’s the father the Cory and husband of Rose has shoes fill as a working African America man. He is the family breadwinner and plays the dominant role in the play. Troy’s childhood was pretty rough growing up on a farm of 11 children. Overtime, he realizes the change of society. He builds a friendship fellow sanitation worker, Jim Bono while in the penitentiary. Troy planned to build a fence around his house to control the number of people on his property. The fence also plays a symbolic role throughout the drama. These motives and characteristics control is what makes Troy the friend, father, worker, and husband he is today.

I think it’s a perfect example of women in the 1950s because after the war, women still found themselves in traditional roles but were slowly breaking out of them. When the men returned from the war, many women wished to keep their jobs but instead became stay at home mothers who were expected to care for the children as well as cook and clean. Many ads and TV shows portrayed the perfect “wife and mother” that women in the 1950s were expected to be. Rose deals with Troy 's nonsense mostly because she feels she has too, and even after Troy cheated on her and had a baby by another woman she took care of the baby. An example of this is when Rose said “I told him if he was not the marrying kind, then move out the way so the marrying kind could find me.” This shows that Troy is unloyal, and Rose was always subject to his wild ways. Especially when Rose insisted on marrying him instead of

The role women play in Fences is that they had traditional roles and the distribution of private and public circle. Men functioned in the public circle; they left the home to go to jobs. Women primarily operate in the private circle of home and private chores. When Rose is an encounter with Troy sleeping with another woman, she may choose to stay in the marriage, but if she choices to stay in the marriage it might suggest that she is accepting or helpless. During her marriage, Rose has allowed Troy to fill her life with happiness, wooly, and more. She tells Troy, “I took all my feelings; my wants, and needs, my dreams ... and I buried them inside you” (Wilson). But Troy's deception forces Rose to reexamine her position. Rose replaces her church with her husband. Rose tells Troy that “This child got a mother. But you a womanless man” (Wilson), Rose has chosen to be the bigger person in marriage. She admits her collaboration, but the audience is reminded that her options were few. Yet she is not an abused woman, and when Rose takes the baby Raynell and speaks the lines that end this scene. Clearly, Rose is anticipated by black women as a firm female character and not an enslaved

Rose Maxson is a housewife in the play, Fences is written by August Wilson. Rose is Troy’s loyal wife. She is a mother that cares for all of her children. All in all, Rose Maxson would be one of the most compassionate characters in this play. Compassionate is a strong feeling of sympathy for the suffering or bad luck and having the will of helping those who are affected. In Fences, Rose states, “[...] Your daddy wanted you to be everything he wasn’t...and at the same time, he tried to make you into everything he was. I don’t know if he was right or wrong...but I do know he meant to do more good than he meant to do harm [...]” (Wilson, 97). In this quote, Rose demonstrated her concern for Cory, in terms of his hasty decision on not to attend

Another flaw of Troy is to cheat on his wife Rose with a lady Alberta. At this time of the play Troy is in his 50s and he hurts his wife telling her he will be somebody else's daddy. “Rose: You telling me you gonna be somebody else's daddy? You telling your wife this?” (66). In this moment Troy is wife-less. He spent his time at his home and over at Albertas, and has to look over

For example, Jenny Stringer states, “Wilson's plays focus on the alienation, frustration, and rage of black men and women in America, and present, in striking and articulate dramatic dialogue, the dispossessed black voices of the American past and present,” (The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English). The issue of alienation of black men and women and the suppressing of their voices remains a contemporary issue, as is demonstrated by the racial tensions regarding police officers and the Black Lives Matter movement, for instance. Fences manages to transcend time by way of its modern realism and focus on real-life issues and

Troy felt just because he was a man he had the right to marry Rose even though he did not

Throughout their lives, humans tend to build fences around the things they care for both literally and metaphorically. A fence is designed for the purpose of either keeping the unwanted out or protecting loved ones. In August Wilson's 1983 play entitled Fences, fences are formed both literally and figuratively. In the opening of act I, scene 2 Rose, the wife of the play's protagonist Troy Maxson sings a song asking Jesus to “be a fence all around me every day”. Through her song, Rose is asking Jesus to conceal and protect her from the troubles of her present day society. However, Rose is not the only character hoping to build up a fence, throughout the play, many of Wilson's characters seek to build fences around themselves and the ones they love. Wilson's play is based around the theme of building up fences in order to both keep out and enclose certain things, ideas, and people.

August Wilson’s plays Fences depicting the 1950s and King Hedley II the 1980s, are two plays from his Ten Plays Project. The Ten Plays Project was Wilson’s way of capturing African American life during each decade of the 20th century. While the plays seem to be centered around the men of the households, the men’s supportive wives Rose and Tonya reduce their egos and play huge roles in both plays by being the glue and nurturers for their families. Although Rose and Tonya display different levels of maturity, and of the societal values in their decade, they both try to maintain stability in their households.

August Wilson has said that the creative process that led him to write Fences was set in motion not by an idea for a plot, or even for a character, but by an image: the image of a black man holding a baby. I believe he was trying to be the best dad he could and the best husband to fulfill the need of his family. Therefore, one very important theme is the family. Later in the play, is obvious how he did not succeed either as a husband or father. He cheated on his wife, a beautiful daughter was a result, but the stepmother took care of her. This is an example of how the wife was trying to keep this family

In Fences, Wilson presents how men’s behavior toward women have been superior. Rose’s character has tolerated Troy's [Rose Husband] crucial behavior. When Rose found out that Troy had an affair with Alberta, she stated, "you ain't been home from work but time enough to change your clothes and run out...and you wanna call that the best you can do?"(Wilson 74). Even with Troy's affair, Rose has been patient with Troy because she still loved and wanted to be with him. Rose has invested so much in Troy that she hasn’t been thinking about herself and her happiness. She waited six months with hopes that they will still be together. Realizing her investment

For example, in Act 1, Scene 1, Troy and Bono are talking outside, and when Rose, Troy’s wife, asks “what you all out here getting into?” Troy responds with “what you worried about what we getting int for? This is men talk women.” This exchange of words also shows how men were supposed to be the superior to women. This is further supported when Troy tells Rose “well go on back in the house and let me finish what we was talking about. This is men talk. I got talk for you later you know what kind of talk I mean. You go on and powder it up.” This quote illustrates the idea that women of this time period are to be subordinate to

The reason why August Wilson chose to set his play Fences in 1957 is because it was a pivotal moment in United States history for equal rights. Throughout the story, the characters go through trials and tribulations because they are African Americans in the United States during this time. The main character, Troy, is an African American man who struggles the most from being a black man. The title “Fences” has many symbolic meanings and it has significance to the slavery period in America. August Wilson also created the time period with his language use as well.