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  • Essay / Gender Boundary Analysis by Kathleen Brown - 1312

    However, Brown asserts how gender roles and identities shaped the perceptions and interactions of English settlers and Native American civilizations. Indian and English societies have critical social orders between men and women. Moreover, their cultural difference also reflects the guilt of English and Indian men and women. However, Indians give too much responsibility to their women. Women were responsible as farmers, producers, and customers of vital household items and tools. They also controlled the provision of much of the material culture of daily needs such as clothing, domestic equipment and furniture like baskets, bedding and house construction. Native American women were expected to perform various tasks. On the other hand, Indian men were content to clear new plantation lands and constantly left villages to fish and hunt. Obviously, Aboriginal women had more tasks than men. Consequently, the social and professional roles of Indian men became distinct from those of women at the time of the huskanaw (a rite of passage by which Virginia Indian boys became men) and remembered until the men are too old to hunt or wage war. The English commentator George Percy points out: "Men take pleasure in hunting and in their wares, in which they continually find themselves." “On the other hand, women were heavily burdened,” says another commentator, John Smith. Gender is directly referential in an important sense, describing how sexual division was understood in the social order. Therefore, Native Americans prescribed a gendered social practice that women should be charged with a range of responsibilities than others.