Masculinity & The Role of Women in Glengarry Glen Ross

                Although no women are present in Glengarry Glen Ross, Levene and Roma use patriarchal concepts of women in their dialogue and action to assert their own dominance and traditional masculinity to themselves and to the other men around them.
                In his book The Art & Craft of Playwriting, Jeffrey Hatcher notes how powerful Levene’s twice-occurring line about his daughter is within the context of the play (Hatcher 28-29). “Out of context,” says Hatcher, “it could mean anything,” but within the confines of the narrative, it is both a “plea and a weapon.” When Levene tells Williamson, “John, my daughter….” he is pleading with Williamson to sympathize with his daughter’s dependence on him as her father (Mamet 26, 104). I would push this farther and say that Levene is wielding the patriarchal construct of a vulnerable daughter needing assistance from her father. Through this, he is able to assert his masculinity as a father figure. A dual-edge to this rhetorical weapon is that he is also manipulating Williamson to accept this patriarchal construct and sympathize with him so that Levene can gain the upper hand. Although Levene seems to be casting himself as a victim, all the men in this play are obviously opportunists, so it is clear that Levene is still using the plea to sway Williamson into cooperating.

                 In Act Two, Levene brags that he has closed a major deal with a couple over units in Mountain View (Mamet 73). When he later tells his story to Roma, Levene says that he was in the couple's kitchen eating crumb cake provided by Harriet Nyborg, the wife. When Roma asks how it was, Levene responds that it was “from the store,” to which Roma simply responds “F*ck her” (72). This negative and vitriolic response to a woman giving a man a store-bought food item also coincidences with patriarchal masculinity that serves as an assertion of masculine dominance. Women are expected to make homemade food, and when they purchase store-bought items, a patriarchal worldview deems it a step outside of female responsibility. By mentioning that the cake was store-bought, Levene undercuts Harriet’s worth within his patriarchal construct. By cursing, Roma has secured his masculinity while also using an imperative, dominant voice toward Levene. Through this piece of dialogue, both men are confirming their masculinity to each other by belittling a woman who has not adhered to their shared patriarchal concept of female duty.



                After Roma closes the deal with Lingk, Lingk’s wife insists they cancel it (Mamet 82). Roma tries to convince Lingk to put off canceling the deal until the following Monday, in an attempt to make the three open business days elapse that Lingk could use to cancel (83-85). Although the verbal manipulation is between Roma and Lingk, Roma’s actual adversary he is fighting to keep the deal alive is Lingk’s absent wife. Although he never directly insults her, Roma still fights to erase Lingk’s wife’s agency in her marriage and financial security. By attempting to secure the deal, Roma is reinforcing his masculinity while overruling Lingk’s wife’s choice and her husband’s decision to side with her. If Roma loses the deal, his masculinity is not only damaged through the failure to close, but also through losing to a woman and a lesser-patriarchal man who is willing to listen to his wife.
                In Glengarry Glen Ross, Levene and Roma use patriarchal constructs in an attempt to define themselves as traditionally masculine and dominant. By using stereotypes and manipulation of women, the two men try to assert power in their environment.

Works Cited

Hatcher, Jeffrey. The Art and Craft of Playwriting. Cincinnati: F+W Publications, 1996. Print.

Objects in the Garden and the Unreachable Woman

                The inorganic objects Akash plants in the family garden in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth” illustrate the impossibility for Ruma and her father to reconnect with the identity of Ruma’s dead mother.
                Toward the end of Unaccustomed Earth, Ruma asks her son Akash what he and her father are doing (Lahiri 44). Akash replies that they are planting the toys he is carrying in his arms. When Ruma follows Akash outside, she sees that her father has prepared a plot for Akash’s things. The boy plants a “pink rubber ball, a few pieces of Lego stuck together,” and “a wooden block etched with a star.” Although Akash expects, or at least pretends, that these items will grow, so much so that he later asks Ruma’s father how long it will take for the plants to emerge, all his toys are things that cannot grow no matter how well-cultivated (49). Throughout the story, both Ruma and her father make decisions and take action that evoke certain characteristics of Ruma’s deceased mother. Despite these actions, both characters remain disconnected from the identity of the dead mother. Similar to the things Akash plants, their actions are not able to produce a result.
                Ruma’s decision to quit her legal work and become a stay-at-home mother of Akash and her unborn child serves as a way to reconnect with the lost identity of her mother. After her mother’s death, all of Ruma’s legal work becomes “ridiculous to her,” and all she wants to do is “stay home with Akash” (5). The loss of Ruma’s mother rips the central figure of maternity from her life, and she longs to replace it by becoming a stay-at-home mother herself. However, Akash himself stands as a block between Ruma reuniting with the identity of her mother. Whenever Ruma’s mother is mentioned to him, Akash immediately confirms that “she died” (17). He has no awareness of his grandmother except for her absence. Although Ruma tries to resurrect the identity of her mother by being a mother herself, the attempt is rendered futile by Akash’s constant verbal reminder of the dead mother, causing an emotional disconnection for Ruma. Like Akash’s toys in the garden, Ruma’s attempt to connect with her mother remains stagnant. Although Ruma feels closer to her mother “in death than she had in life,” she is still aware that they remain utterly separate (27).
                Similarly, Ruma’s father begins traveling after his wife died, which could have served as a way of fulfilling Ruma's mother's dream and creating a way for him to connect with her identity. Instead, it moves him farther from his dead wife. Ruma and her mother were supposed to go to Paris after her mother’s surgery, but her mother’s accidental death leaves Ruma unwilling to go (Lahiri 19). Ruma’s father becomes the traveler instead, but rather than reconnecting with the identity of his wife, he meets and begins to fall in love with Mrs. Bagchi (21, 8).  At the end of the story, Akash wants to plant Ruma’s father’s postcard intended for Mrs. Bagchi in the garden (58). Although Ruma initially wants to shred it, she chooses to post the letter, the first of her actions that allow her and her father to move on with their lives and make new connections after her mother’s death (59).
                Just as Akash’s inorganic objects are unable to grow into plants, so are Ruma's and her father’s actions unable to connect them to the woman they both lost. Only when they let go of her are they able to move on with their lives.

(Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Unaccustomed Earth.” n.d. PDF file.)