Fences

Melanie Jackson

Mrs. Herr

English 101

25 April 2013

Fences

August Wilson’s Fences is the fifth play in his Pittsburgh Cycle series of dramas. Using symbolism and metaphors, Wilson reveals the story of Troy Maxson, the male lead, who tramples through his life with a brash, self-centered personality that taints and marginalizes every person he comes in contact with. Troy epitomizes the non-emotional, aggressive, unyielding, but responsible stereotype of masculinity. In turn, his wife Rose typifies the 50s housewife. She is always at home cooking and cleaning, while mothering, nurturing, and loving. As models of femininity and masculinity in their time, they as mother and father advocating vastly different codes of behavior, each have competing molds for their offspring. In Fences, Wilson illustrates the deficiency of such typical 1950s strictly differentiated gender roles in parenting through the outcomes of Troy’s three children.

According to Joseph Wessling, “Fences is about the always imperfect quest for true manhood” (123). Troy and his son Lyons have different definitions of masculinity that were molded under contradictory conditions. During Lyons’ impressionable years, Troy was in prison. The main influence on the formation of his character was his mother. In contrast to Lyons’ upbringing, Troy was raised with only an extremely aggressive model of masculinity, so he does not understand Lyons’ refusal to conduct himself as he feels a grown man should. Both men failed to receive teachings of characteristics ascribed to a specific gender in the 1950s, and so their understandings of the rules for gendered behavior differ. Without the reinforcement of strict male roles, Lyons lacks aspects that Troy defines as necessary to be a man that his mother, socialized with female gender roles, could not give him. In the absence of male influence, Troy states that Lyons’ mother, “did a hell of a job,” raising him emphasizing his disapproval of Lyon’s character...