I thought the reading was not only an interesting story but a strongly symbolic message. Clearly the author intended for there to be many underlying themes about the oppression of women and oppressive gender stereotypes as well as stigmas around mental health. The beginning of the reading reminded me a lot of my 101 class when we talked about the ‘silent problem’ in the 50s and 60s when many housewives of middle class families were having mental breakdowns similar to the one depicted in the reading. They were the result of oppressive gender roles that did not allow educated women to do anything but tend to house chores and babies. This lack of fulfillment lead to insomnia, anxiety, and depression like the kind the main character here suffers from. I think my point is made obvious when she mentions how she never would have wanted a baby but that is not something she could ever say out loud. Equally telling is the fact that everyone surrounding her finds it disturbing that she writes and therefore she finds the need to hide it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I thought the reading was not only an interesting story but a strongly symbolic message. Clearly the author intended for there to be many underlying themes about the oppression of women and oppressive gender stereotypes as well as stigmas around mental health. The beginning of the reading reminded me a lot of my 101 class […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7332,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7331\/revisions\/7332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}