Gender roles are prominent within this book. The stereotypical roles were portrayed in this book, such as most of the laborious work is left to Pa to do, emphasising the manual load that males had to undertake, whilst the women were to look after the children and cook and wash. The children, Laura and Mary, were to follow in their mother’s footsteps of helping around with house chores, taking on the more feminine roles.However, during this time, as there was so much work to do, both the women and children had to help work on the prairie, which is shown in the chapter ‘two stout doors’.
Pa fulfills the traditional masculine role in the first part of this chapter by making sure the wolves had gone. He did this by following the wolf tracks making sure they were far away form his family. This shows how protective the males are of their female family in threatening situations. Pa makes sure the house and his family are safe and taking it upon himself, as the man of the house, to make sure the wolves are gone. Pa takes it upon himself to do all the laborious and hard working jobs, such as exploring the area with risk of getting into dangerous situations and not asking the women to help him, showing the masculine role he portrays. Pa collected all the materials needed to make the house, and collected the 'timber for the door' and built the doors for both the house and the barn house. Pa performs the classic gender role stereotype by being hardworking and doing all of the harder more physical tasks, which shows no surprises about the gender role of pa in this chapter.
Both Ma and Mary fulfill the more feminine roles of the family. They look after the family and and do tasks such as cooking and sewing, which are stereotypical female jobs. Compared to Laura, Mary is seen as a more traditional female, especially in this chapter where she 'watched the baby' whilst Pa worked on making the doors. This shows her as a more traditional female character as she does not take part in the more masculine and laborious jobs. Ma was doing a traditional role whilst Pa is making the door, 'supper was cooking on the fire'. As the mother she is expected to look after and feed the family and do the house chores, which in the chapter she portrays the stereotype of the female role in the house.
Laura is the exception to the stereotypical female role that society gives. She is different from her sister, as she partakes in the more masculine role in helping Pa with making the door, and Pa encouraging her help by saying 'I had a fine little helper', showing that her more masculine tendencies are encouraged by Pa, which is to be expected as the whole family were to be involved in helping with the maintaining of the house and grounds, meaning that even the females would have to do more traditionally masculine work. Even though she only helped with the passing of tools and with the lock on the door, it is more of an involvement than Mary, showing how willing Laura is to take on the more laborious jobs. In later chapters she says she enjoys being outside in the sunshine with Pa whilst Ma and Mary sit inside doing some sewing. This shows that Laura is more inclined to want to do the more stereotypical masculine rolls than Mary and Ma, as well as helping with chores around the house with Ma. Laura is a surprise to the stereotypical gender roles.
Overall, Pa, Ma and Mary all fit the gender roles that we expect of them, whilst Laura defies these gender normative roles of the time. However, this book is probably portrays the more stereotypical gender roles to highlight Laura's will to be outside more and help with Pa.
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