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Patriarchy And The Protestants: A New Historical And Feminist Reading Of Marilynne Robinson’S Gilead, Jesse D. Lawhead

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

In her novel Gilead, Marilynne Robinson establishes a correlation between the presence of Protestantism and constricting gender roles women experience in the United States. Living in 1956 Gilead, Iowa, seventy-six-year-old Pastor John Ames begins writing to his seven-year-old son in a series of journal entries after he is diagnosed with a terminal case of angina pectoris. In these journal entries to his son, Ames records the histories of his reverend father, reverend grandfather, his own life, and present observations as the beauty of life continues to captivate him. Ultimately he hopes to “to tell [his son] things [he] might never …