Throughout Dillard's, An American Childhood, she describes the distinct gender roles of men and those of women in the 1950's. Dillard tells us of the explicitly different duties and responsibilities men and women had. The influence which society, specifically adults, has on Annie is extremely powerful and ultimately acts as a guiding light into her future. This influence eventually drives her to desire knowledge about why society has structured such gender roles. Annie specifically questions why women of her era allow themselves to be subservient to men, and therefore intentionally further affirm the notion that women are not as capable as men. She does not intuitively believe that she shall feel satisfied pursuing the envisioned mold society and generations past have created for the women of her time. The ultimate effect of Annie's reaction to society's pervasive influence is her realization that a future containing personal fulfillment shall only be attained through the pursuit of her own intuitive and conscious decisions and actions.

From early childhood, the society which Dillard grows up in, attempts to shape and mold young boys and girls in ho

Knowledge and personal liberation come from stepping outside of one's comfortable boundaries and questioning the unquestioned. Boundaries only limit possible discoveries and new understandings. Annie detaches herself from society's expectations of the female gender through daring to venture outside society's boundaries. Knowledge can expand, like air, and suffocate ignorance, and Annie's growing process of questioning, realizing, and finally understanding, is a mirror image of precisely this.

"A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside her skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade, and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her dreaming private life-the nation, the city, the neighborhood, the house where the family lives-as an actual project underway, a project living people willed, and made well or failed, and are still making, herself among them. I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers," (74).

The females became oblivious to and/or deny the possibilities of the "actual world before them" (91). It was seldom during this time that females in this traditional society would dance to a beat of a different drum. Since childhood, young boys were surrounded by the idea "...that it was theirs by rights as boys, a real world." (92). Boys quickly caught on that they were to be the ones who would soon be doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. They could dream and plan a future they desired for themselves and know that it was probable for their dreams to soon become their realities. Young girls, on the other hand, did not often dream of comparable possibilities with the same positive outlook that the boys were able to Women role models symbolized the most probable fate for a female child, to take care of a household. The continuous attempt to imitate past generations is what drives this 1950's, suburban, upper-middle class, society to try to mold the existing generation of young children, once again.

It is because of people like Annie, who have the courage to question the norm, that we are able to gradually break from specified gender roles more and more. Whether one is a woman or a man has nothing to do with one's true dreams and capabil

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Approximate Word count = 1531
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)