Book Reviews & Reflections

Reflective blog

In today’s society, some cultures still believe that women should be subservient to their husbands or male members of the family. These gender roles create expectations that women must obey their husbands and act according to their wishes and not make their own decisions as men do. This was seen in Born a Crime. Abel has these beliefs, but could never fall in love with subservient women. This is a result of the desire to control his partner rather than having a genuine desire for companionship. Men like him, even in today’s society, always desire women who go against them to exercise their power over them. In response to society's gender role expectations, Patricia is a good example of a resilient woman who, against all odds, finds her independence and lives up to her desires and decisions to build her own life, not what society and her family choose for her. In traditional gender roles and relationship expectations for a man and a woman, women are expected to care for the household, and men are expected to be the family's breadwinners. This makes it men to be believed to do all hard things, and the belief that women are fragile and cannot do some occupations. In the past decades, women have shown that they can do what women can do, and society's definitions of gender roles have been proven wrong. This is mostly in cities, but rural areas still have those beliefs. This does not mean that the society fully embraces independent women; to some men, this becomes a threat in their belief that they are losing their control over women, which they have always desired. This is also seen in Patricia’s life, when Abel couldn’t fully control Patricia, he became violent due to his insecurities that he was losing his power as a man, as Patricia was the opposite of what he expected of her.

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