The Glass Bottle Trick: male stereotypes

Although in this class there is a lage focus on women and culture, I was suprised when I saw how the male, Samuel, was portrayed in the story. Stereotypically, women are the ones that are uneasy with their appearances. In this case, Samuel appears to be the person that stuggles the most with his identity. Samuel tells hsi wife Beatrice, "Yo don't have to draw attention to my color. I'm not a handsome man, and I know it. Black and ugly as my mother made me" (269). Then there is Beatrice the female that can find beauty in skin color, she thinks to herself, "She remembered him joking that no woman should have to give birth to his ugly black babies, but she would show him how beautiful their children would be, little brown bodies new as the earth after the rain. She would show him how to love himself in them" (267). This passage is interesting not only because it shows Samuel's insecurities (a female stereotype), but also that Beatrice is the one that feels she has to show Samuel to love himself. Again, stereotypically, women are the ones that have to be told that they have to learn to love themselves. Beatrice is portrayed as the confident character while Samuel's character is more feminine and and he is a much less confident individual which leads to very strange behaviors reavealed at the end of the story.