“Gender,” as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), “refers to the socially constructed characteristics of women and men, such as norms, roles, and relationships of and between groups of women and men. It varies from society to society and can be changed.”
With this definition in mind, your task with this essay is to provide an argument and analysis—supported by close reading, textual evidence, and historical context—about how the “socially constructed” norms and expectations of gender impact characters in two different course texts.
You will select two texts from the list below and make an argument about how gender expectations impact characters in your texts, and how these expectations vary between the cultures that produced your two chosen texts. When close reading your two texts, you should think about how your chosen characters follow or resist specific historical and cultural expectations about gender, and how these characters are similar and/or different in terms of how they relate to “socially constructed characteristics” of gender.
Sample Solution
