Masculinity In Waterlily

The novel Waterlily displays tradition Dakota culture through the chronicle of a young girl’s life beginning from birth. While many different aspects of native american culture is exhibited, the values of the people are explained in detail through the maturing Waterlily. As she grows, she begins to observe and understand the relationships between family members, men and women, and between large groups within a tribe. In Dakota culture, children were first in all things, especially through the eyes of their female relatives. As the future of the tribe, teaching children how to be respectable and generous adults was of the utmost importance. It is no surprise that Indian women were astounded by the physical and degrading way the whites acted …show more content…
At a certain age, boys would begin to spend less time with their female family members, and instead begin to learn the lessons of being a man. Around the age of puberty, men had to endure many rituals to prove their masculinity. In this novel, a group of young boys were forced to jump into freezing cold water as a way to prepare the boys for unanticipated war raids or buffalo hunt in the winter air. Although men were inspired by the women in their life to be brave and therefore honor them, being called a female was a terrible insult. A meaningful moment in a boy 's life is when he is given his first horse, but the honor was not as great as his first coup of war or his first buffalo killed, both of which caused for a large feast and celebration in his honor. Men were raised to be adventurous, brave, and bold. While women were taught to have many of the same qualities of a man, such as independence, industry, and dignity, they were also expected to be poised and feminine. A loud and outgoing girl was not approved of in this culture. It was expected of girls to be humble in public and bashful when around young suitor boys. To seek out attention was discouraged, in the hopes that natural beauty and a good upbringing would attract suitors on their own. It was of the highest honor for a women to be bought into marriage, something many women would brag about until old age. A married woman was expected to stay busy caring for her husband, her family, and her home. One of her many jobs would be decorating a home, which was the physical representation of her industrious hard work of tending the skins of her husband’s kills and her artistry in the painting and adornment of those skins. Women were not to expect anything from her husband, especially public attention. Couples did not kiss or embrace outside the confines of their tipis, and men were not expected to give their women extra