SOURCE: McKay, Nellie Y. “‘Happy[?]-Wife-and-Motherdom’: The Portrayal of Ma Joad in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.”¹ In New Essays on The Grapes of Wrath, edited by David Wyatt, pp. 47-69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

In the following essay, McKay examines the ways in which the women in The Grapes of Wrath subvert stereotypical gender roles.

Women's social roles in western culture are central concerns in contemporary feminist criticism. The discourse focuses on the idea that our society is organized around male-dominated sex-gender systems that admit two genders, that privilege heterosexual relationships, and that embrace a sexual division of labor in which wife and mother are the primary functions of women.² In such works as Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich,³ Man's World, Woman's Place by Elizabeth Janeway,⁴ The Reproduction of Motherhood: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender by Nancy Chodorow,⁵ and Contemporary Feminist Thought by Hester...