Roses, Rhododendron: A Feminist Analysis
you can find the story this essay analyzes here.
“Roses, Rhododendron” uses the retrospective view of adolescence to present how relationships formed and personalities molded by the dynamics present throughout each person’s youth. Margot is reduced to waiting in torment when John Kilgore abandons his family to travel to Las Vegas with an unknown woman, forced into the biological essentialist role of caregiver. John and Margot’s relationship is juxtaposed with the relationship of Lawrence and Emily, depicting a surrender and subversion of the patriarchal power dynamic of marriage. Jane’s experience with femininity and sisterhood is stained by her mother’s prior experiences and prejudicial thoughts regarding class, beauty, and devotion. These all build into a rough set of ideas that affect Jane’s understanding of power dynamics and relationships.
Even in John Kilgore’s physical absence, Margot abides by him. His abandonment of her and her daughter is not reason enough to divorce. She needs to be pushed over the edge by an acquaintance before she can commit to legal proceedings. Jane’s experience with abandonment is largely positive, seeing the “dark Boston afternoons as a precondition of love,” (Adams 520). For her, the time before became exactly that, the time before she was graced with the love that fulfilled her. In the time between desertion and divorce, Margot becomes reliant on these supernatural forces of decision-making in the Ouija board, putting immense power in the unproven truth emanating from this manufactured plank of spirituality. Her fate is locked into the traditional gender role of the head-of-house-husband, her lack thereof leaving a void of assertion within her, casting the choice of a down-coast relocation into the hands of the spirits around her. Conforming to the social constructionism more violently prevalent in the pre-war setting of the story, Margot and John’s relationship is emblematic of the programmed submissive nature embalmed into the patriarchal ideal woman. Margot is betrayed by her husband, abandoned and singularly burdened with the task of parenthood, being forced into the role of the caregiver by her partner’s backstabbing pursuit of hedonistic pleasure.
Parallels are found in the juxtaposed power dynamics of the relationships between the parental units of the families Farr and Kilgore. Margot is plagued by John’s absence with inaction and indecision, whereas Lawrence’s presence drags Emily to a place of arrested development. Margot acts as the patriarchal woman, instilled with a belief in her marriage that she knows is one-sided. Her reputation not being stained by the status of divorcee, to her, is worth the inherent submission to the misery inflicted by the insistence of their union. Margot and Emily are literally contrasted by Jane, saying that she was “fascinated by Emily’s obvious dissimilarity,” (Adams 521). Emily is faced with a marital deterrence in the form of Lawrence Farr. The diatribes about Trollope’s virtues and sudden confrontations at the dinner table ingrain the steadfast self-righteousness into Lawrence’s character. Emily’s creativity is quite literally squandered by the presence of her husband. She says herself, “I think I was afraid I wouldn’t come up to Trollope. I married rather young, you know,” (Adams 529). In her union with Lawrence, she realizes that she has lost the life of creativity that may have been. These contrasting dynamics presented throughout the short story present a patriarchal woman and the defiance of patriarchy. Rather than let him “hurt her again,” (Adams 527), Emily finds vindication in her assertive divorce from Lawrence. Emily’s desertion of Lawrence leads to his financial and emotional ruin, whereas Johnny’s abandonment of Margot leaves her trapped without closure in emotional turmoil.
In her programmed conformity to the patriarchal ideal femininity, Margot unintentionally begins to warp her daughter’s concepts of womanhood to conform as well. Small experiences with the women in her life build Jane’s concept of feminine identity and the experiences that burden women in a patriarchal society. Margot’s intersectional beliefs of beauty and class present themselves in the parenthetical belief espoused by Jane. In saying that Margot “... had a passionate belief in good clothes, no matter what,” (Adams 521), we see the inextricably linked ideals of beauty and class. In order for one to afford the “good clothes”, one must have money. One example of this connection between insignificant encounters and effects of perception on identity is present in one of the first descriptions that Jane gives to Margot regarding the Farrs. Jane describes the lack of dye in Emily’s hair, and Margot reacts in a defensive statement, as if the presence of other women is a threat to her. Events such as John’s abandonment could, in her mind, stem from either her failure to fulfill the model of an impossibly idealistic patriarchal woman, or a projected female rivalry onto the woman her husband left her for. Margot’s inability to perceive herself as good enough when compared to other women rubs onto Jane, notably realized in the self-comparison to Harriet’s stoic voice. The good patriarchal mother, at least partially, successfully imparts the ideals of patriarchy onto her daughter, molding her into the theoretical desired form of the patriarchy.
The exploration of identity that is inscribed in the pages of “Roses, Rhododendron” forms a picture of intimate experiences with femininity and patriarchal ideals. They mold into a conceptual understanding of gendered roles and the story acts as a mild exploration of female rivalry, shown in Margot and Emily’s strained relationship, as well as the inadequacy felt by Jane in regards to her similarities to Harriet. In addition to these concepts of programmed beliefs in idealistic robot women that could never exist while exhibiting free will, a painting of marriage’s strains and the dominance of battling wills is marked upon the fresh canvas of Jane.
you can find the story this essay analyzes here.
