Amy And Her Husband example essay topic

When it comes to dealing with grief there are very distinct gender roles. In a marriage or a relationship there is always the so-called strong one who never shows any emotion, which is usually the male. Then there is what people call the drama queen, who often lets her emotions control her entire life; more than likely this describes the woman in the relationship. In this poem, "Home Burial", Amy and her husband fit these gender roles perfectly. They argue about the way grief should be express and fail to see it from the other's point of view. We learn that Amy's sorrow began from the moment that she saw her husband "making the gravel leap into the air" (982) as he dug the grave.

She believed through what she saw him do that he could have no "feelings" (982). This forces Amy to go to "somebody else" (983) and share her feelings instead of bonding with her husband, who also shares the loss, but remains unable to discuss it. Amy needs to express her feelings with somebody who feels her pain, and she thinks that her husband is not capable of doing such a thing. Later in the poem, she goes onto say that she doesn't think that any man can do such a thing. This shows the way that many people perceive men to be unable to show their feelings as easily as women do. It isn't as if they cannot feel, but it is that they have difficulty expressing their emotions as freely as women do.

Part of this can be blamed upon the way that they are brought up to think that men are stronger and that if you cry you are a wimp, and that women are the only ones who are allowed to cry and show emotions. Even though many people believe in this, it is as far from the truth as one can get. Amy has little difficulty showing her feelings, but she seldom shares them with her husband. When Amy goes to leave her husband, he calls out to her, "Don't go to someone else this time" (981). This action shows that he is distressed, but he is having trouble showing it and keeps from expressing any emotion until the time in which he fears her departure. When he refers to her taking her problems to "someone else" (981), he wants Amy to go to him with her problems.

He needs Amy to understand that he wants to be the one to comfort her, and that he will always be there for her because he can't lose her. He needs Amy just as much as she needs him; Amy leaving him is his biggest fear. They both seem to feel injured, and losing a child is obviously going to create serious problems in any relationship. The father / husband masked his suffering with the words "Three foggy mornings and one rainy day Will rot the best birch fence a man can build" (982), because he feels it is his responsibility to remain in control of his emotions and their relationship, staying strong allowing his wife to play the role of the emotionally unstable wife.

This is the way many people view a relationship. The man is the one who is strong and holds the family together, while the wife is the one who shows emotions. Although that is the way that a marriage or relationship is thought of, roles are not as defined in a relationship; all people should be equal and a person's gender should have nothing to do with who they are. Women see things easier than men; Amy had always acknowledged the tiny graveyard and "the child's mound" (981), while her husband grew so accustomed to it that he no longer took notice.

When he saw Amy staring out the window, he asked her, "What is it you see From up there always-for I want to know" (980). This seemed to hurt Amy in many ways, for she did not understand how her husband could forget such a thing. Later on she calls him a "blind creature" (981) knowing that he will not see their "child's mound" (981), and when given the time to look out the small window he finally sees what she sees. Once he admits to seeing it, he says that he "never noticed it from" there "before" (981). To Amy this seems to show her that he must not think about it as often as she does.

She feels that if her husband really cared about their loss that he would have noticed this before and he would think about it more often then he does. The problem is that society thinks that women take notice of the smaller things in life, the things that men seem to brush aside. That isn't true. It isn't that they don't notice, but that they deal with their grief differently and they don't want to have daily reminders about what they have gone through.

Amy must understand that her husband too has lost a child, and people deal with grief in different ways. Just because the man buried their child doesn't mean that he didn't feel anything; the child needed to be buried. The husband wants to be there for his wife and he even tells her not to "carry it to somebody else this time" and to "let (him) into (her) grief" (982). If she won't talk to him or let him talk about the dead child, how is he supposed to grieve? She believes that he has already forgotten about their child, as she says "Friends make pretense of following to the grave. But before one is in it, their minds are turned And making the best of their way back to life...

". (983). It seems that she wants to die with her child and doesn't want to keep on living without him. In a way she feels guilty for living when her child cannot.

She needs to let go of her anger and let herself grieve and realize that different people have different ways of dealing with the loss of a loved one. Gender roles when dealing with grief are hard to avoid as shown in this poem, "Home Burial". The husband played the role of the male who with holds his emotions. Amy, like most women, had trouble dealing with her feelings and often let them take control of her. This poem serves as a perfect example of how gender roles apply when it comes to grief.