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In the story “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson, uses the typical feminist stereotype in her story. With using a character named Tessi and having Bill Hutcheson as the male lead. This is a common thing in Jackson's books where the female character has more of the spotlight than other characters in the story. It is said by Carpenter that Jackson stories female character is, “a social misfit, not beautiful enough, charming enough, or articulate enough to get along well with other people, too introverted and awkward.” In the story, we do get to see that from Tessi when the paper with the dot is chosen by her family members. At the beginning of the story, we see that all of the males and kids are outside, but no females. This could imply the fact the females are in their houses cleaning and doing chores. That a typical female would do in the earlier days. Even to this day we do have still female people who do chores, cook, and do what their husbands say, but things are and have been changing over the years and females are starting to get a voice. We do get a definitive answer with Tessi, one of the female main characters, says she is late due to her washing the dishes. This implies that while her husband and kids were outside gathering for the lottery. No one from the household told her that the meeting was about to start and left Tessi at home finishing washing her dishes and her duties as a wife and a female character in the story.
Later on in the story we also get that Tessi refuses to show her paper to the town because she knows that she has the spot on the paper. The town also knew she had the paper, but they had to see it with their own eyes in case it was a mistake. Tessi never showed her paper instead her husband did. Tessi's husband showed her paper to the town, which is not something you expect your husband to do. Usually in a relationship, you expect both the wife and the husband to protect and love each other. In this case, we can see that Tessi's husband has more dominance over her than she does over him as his wife. Tessi's husband, Bill, comes off as someone that you shouldn’t disrespect or make fun of especially in front of other people. This action makes the reader question whether Bill truly cares about his wife Tessi. Since he is willing to show the paper even though he knows whoever wins the lottery is pretty much a death sentence for one of the family members.
In the middle of the story, I believe that is what exactly happens with Bill having more dominance than Tessi due to her saying that it was a mistake and persisting with coming up with any excuse to not die and not let anyone from her family get killed. As she was doing that Tessi's husband kept trying to get her to calm down and not make a fuss about it, since it is natural for the lottery winners and eventually, they would have been picked. This shows to the reader that the husband had more authority to get Tessi to calm down. Tessi is seen as being obedient only to her husband since after Bill said to calm down she did, but she also was upset that she had to follow Bill's command since it is her family that is going to get affected by the lottery. Tessi also seemed a little bit over-emotional while she was coming up with excuses to not be part of the lottery. While her husband is calm and looking a bit annoyed that she is trying to come up with excuses to get out of it. It is understandable for Tessi to want to survive since, “The ritual of the lottery, as Jackson depicts it in her story, is characterized as a survival, that is, as a model of behavior which has devolved or degenerated through time until it is virtually meaningless.” said by Giroux and Narins. This clearly shows that Tessi was doing anything to survive. We don’t know whether Tessi was trying to save herself or was trying to protect her family from death.
So in four different parts of the story, we have Tessi be a stereotypical female who is subordinate, a social misfit, and emotional. Even though The Lottery doesn’t revolve around Tessi it does give some good hints about a stereotypical female from the past. I do believe Shirley could have been trying to show how she feels as a woman since it is said by Hyman, “She tried to express as much of herself as possible in her work and to express each aspect as fully and purely as possible.” I do believe that is what we can interpret in the lottery not only on the feminist side but the story itself. The story in the earlier times was considered dark, especially with the killing of someone by throwing rocks at them also known as stoning. The irony of it is that if Tessi's family wasn’t chosen and if it was a different family that won the lottery Tessie wouldn’t have complained at all. Since her family did win the lottery she made up with reasons to not participate or to redo the lottery. I believe Jackson created Tessi the way she is on purpose.
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