The Protagonist In Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees

In the second and third chapter of The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, she writes about Lou Ann Ruiz who lives in Tucson, Arizona. She is seven months pregnant and is married to a man named Angel. Angel was in an accident threes years prior and lost a leg. He highly relied on his wife for support. She happily complied until she started realizing that their marriage is falling apart. On Halloween, she comes home from the doctor to realize that her husband has packed his items and left. She doesn’t know what to do with this newfound stress except cry. Her motivation to keep striving is her baby since she wants her to have a good home. Her antagonist is her gender and how it causes men to mistreat her. Kingsolver’s theme in these chapters is …show more content…
In the beginning of the chapter as she is boarding the bus the narrator states, “The high school boys didn’t make remarks… or try to rub up against her… To be able to relax this way on a crowded bus was a new experience for Lou Ann” (Kingsolver 40). This quote can symbolize how Lou Ann has grown accustomed to being harassed by riders on the bus. The fact that she is pregnant lures away potential tormentors from touching her. Being a woman makes her susceptible to people sexually harassing her yet she can’t do anything to prevent it. She is forced to deal with the pain and embarrassment that the tormentors cause her because she is a woman that has no say in the way her body is looked at. This mistreatment can also be found in the baby, Turtle, that is given to Taylor. Taylor unwraps the baby’s diaper only to realize bruises and worse. By worse, it can be hypothesized that she was raped since it mentioned, “A girl, poor thing. That fact had already burdened her”(Kingsolver 31). This can further prove that women are mistreated no matter what age they are. Kingsolver wants to show that women are mistreated and used for their bodies. This theme can help promote the need for change in the way that women are treated. It shows how women are affected by being mistreated and how it can lead to mistrust and a sense of paranoia from being around men. Lou Ann feels paranoia as she enters the bus since she knows that she is about to be groped by random men. The paranoia only disappaits as she remembers that she is pregnant and that she is considered unattractive by them. Being a woman is a burden since it leads to harassment and being used as an object that was created to satisfy the desires of men. Mistreatment is not the only problem that women must face since there is also