Blog 3: Gender

In Salvage the Bones, the role of gender plays a few very obvious roles. In Esch, the narrator, we see a very curious amalgamation of femininity. Her sexuality is very much in the forefront of her character, something not typically allowed of women, particularly young women. This is assumably because of the household in which she was raised; surrounded by boys and men in a very rough and traditionally masculine landscape, Esch appears to be assembling for herself a distinct version of what it means to be a woman. While the boys in the family had their father to hedge out for them what it meant to be a man, all Esch is left with is China, a dog, and the memory of her mother (albeit with the addition of other mother-like figures like Mudda Ma’am, and Sharylin). The way Esch values herself also speaks to her interesting gender expression; the only two things she believes she can do well is have sex and swim, one a form of sexual expression and one an example of physical prowess. Whats relevant about this in terms of gender is that these are things that young men normally consider valuable talents; sexual prowess and sports, but for Esch, this is how she defines herself and by proxy, how she defines herself in terms of gender. While the boys all succeed in very obvious forms of masculinity, Esch’s gender expression appears much more complex. The absence of her mother likely plays a rather large role here. While its obvious that all the kids were in a way left to raise themselves, in a place like Bois Sauvage, masculinity is fed through everything, meaning Esch is left to discover femininity alone in a way the boys were never required to do for their masculinity. It then, makes sense, why she struggles so much. The knowledge of her impending motherhood scares her, and rightfully so, because what she’s learned about motherhood from China and her mother is something very scary. The way motherhood and sacrifice play into this conception of femininity for Esch, I believe, would be starkly different were she to have actually grown up with a mother.