| This dissertation is an analysis of four major plays by August Wilson-Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson and Fences--chronicling the black man in America through the twentieth century. Specifically, this study focuses on gender role strain in Wilson's male characters. Gender role strain prefers to "objective and perceived difficulties experienced as people engage in valued social roles." In America, the expected roles for males at different stages of life are that of student, worker, and family provider. Males are expected to attend school, get a job, marry, have children and provide for their families. Society expects males to perform well in these roles to be deemed a man. In W. J. Goode's (1960) article, "A Theory of Role Strain" in the American Sociological Review, he states, "People want to do what they are expected to in social roles but it isn't always easy and may sometimes even be impossible." Ultimately, society's definition of manhood and males' attempt to obtain manhood by that definition cause tension--gender role strain.; Each of Wilson's plays, set in a different decade, articulates the inability of black men to perform effectively in society's socially expected roles for men. A re-occurring theme in Wilson's plays is male characters struggling with economic problems due to their inability to find adequate work, which weakens their authority position in the family. This weakened position forces the male characters to question their manhood and sometimes erupt in verbal, mental and/or physical violence against family members and friends in their lives--injuring and damaging familial relationships and friendships. A major problem for Wilson's male characters is that they have not questioned the normative hypothesis about socially accepted male roles. Their acceptance of this cultural norm causes gender role strain within the characters. Wilson's plays provide the conceptual and theoretical framework for examining gender role strain in black males who accept society's notion of what it takes to be a man, but are denied the resources to earn their masculinity through traditional channels. |
