Gender Roles in the Ojibwe Society
Love Medicine is a multi-layered story taking place over the course of fifty years. These characters, both reflect traditional as well as changing gender roles in Ojibwe society. The main characters in the story seem to be trying to balance the old role with changing role. Some succeed while others do not. This paper will address the primary characters and their attempts at maintaining traditional gender roles as poverty, drug and alcohol abuse and infidelity surround them. These are problems that the Ojibwe knew nothing of until life on the reservation became the norm. A short description of traditional gender roles in Ojibwe society will preface an analysis of the main male and female characters’ success or failure in balancing the old with the new. …show more content…
(Buffalohead, 238)
While in the case of traditional interaction between the diferent gender groups was an attempt to create a sense of balance, the opening of Love Medicine shows that this balance no longer exists in most of the characters of the book. This is first seen in the actions of June who cannot find balance in her gender position due to the fact that she does not connect to the typical female gender roles. It seems that her lack of balance relates to her mother’s incompetence as a mother. She has grown to mistrust the female/mother role in her life. As her Aunt Marie relates about June’s impoverished childhood:
Those Lazzares just stood there, yawning and picking their grey teeth, with the girl (June) between them most likely drunk too. No older than nine years. She could hardly stand upright. I looked at her. What I saw was starved bones, a shank of black strings, a piece of rag on her I wouldn’t use to wipe a pig.
Love Medicine is a multi-layered story taking place over the course of fifty years. These characters, both reflect traditional as well as changing gender roles in Ojibwe society. The main characters in the story seem to be trying to balance the old role with changing role. Some succeed while others do not. This paper will address the primary characters and their attempts at maintaining traditional gender roles as poverty, drug and alcohol abuse and infidelity surround them. These are problems that the Ojibwe knew nothing of until life on the reservation became the norm. A short description of traditional gender roles in Ojibwe society will preface an analysis of the main male and female characters’ success or failure in balancing the old with the new. …show more content…
(Buffalohead, 238)
While in the case of traditional interaction between the diferent gender groups was an attempt to create a sense of balance, the opening of Love Medicine shows that this balance no longer exists in most of the characters of the book. This is first seen in the actions of June who cannot find balance in her gender position due to the fact that she does not connect to the typical female gender roles. It seems that her lack of balance relates to her mother’s incompetence as a mother. She has grown to mistrust the female/mother role in her life. As her Aunt Marie relates about June’s impoverished childhood:
Those Lazzares just stood there, yawning and picking their grey teeth, with the girl (June) between them most likely drunk too. No older than nine years. She could hardly stand upright. I looked at her. What I saw was starved bones, a shank of black strings, a piece of rag on her I wouldn’t use to wipe a pig.