In this way, gender is intimately connected to social expectations, rather than to sex: we allow the knowledge of the sex of a child to inform us which set of gender characteristics we are supposed to encourage in that child. ...

• Word Count: 3294
• Approx Pages: 13
• Grade Level: High School

Thus, she has an inborn knowledge of Indian culture and society which explains the fact that Markandaya's heroines are well drilled in the tenets of Indian ethos. ... When she finds the emotional center of her life, her relationship with her husband, threatened by the discovery that he fathered another woman's sons, she neither strikes out at him nor crumbles: Disbelief first; disillusionment; anger, reproach, pain. ...

• Word Count: 3535
• Approx Pages: 14