Gender Roles and Feminism

Introduction

Both Born a Crime, Trevor Noah’s memoir of growing up under and after apartheid, and Ibsen’s play Hedda Gabler interrogate the constraints placed on women by society. While Noah spotlights his mother Patricia’s subversion of traditional maternal roles to protect and empower her son, Ibsen presents Hedda’s radical rejection of Victorian domestic expectations. Together, the texts reveal how women navigate—and challenge—patriarchal norms in vastly different contexts.

Body Paragraph 1 (COM)

• Point: Both Patricia and Hedda overturn passive “ideal” femininity through acts of surprising agency.

• Evidence (Text A): Patricia insists to Trevor, “If I don’t punish you, the world will punish you even worse. … When I beat you, I’m trying to save you” .

• Analysis (Text A): Noah uses Patricia’s unflinching repetition and juxtaposition of “punish” and “save” to show maternal love as active defense rather than gentle submission.

• Connect: Similarly, Hedda shatters polite womanhood…

• Evidence (Text B): Hedda, alone with Judge Brack, cocks her pistol and declares, “I’m going to shoot you, sir!” .

• Analysis (Text B): Ibsen’s dark comedy and the stage direction of loading a weapon reveal Hedda’s refusal to remain a “harmless” hostess, instead wielding power in a male-coded gesture.

• COM: Both women seize control of their circumstances by enacting what society least expects of them—physical, even violent agency—thereby undermining the passive roles assigned to their gender.

• Tie Back: This defiance sets the stage for each text’s broader critique of restrictive gender norms.

Body Paragraph 2 (CON)

• Point: Though both rebel, the purpose behind their agency diverges: Patricia’s is altruistic, Hedda’s self-serving.

• Evidence (Text A): Patricia explains, “Everything I have ever done I’ve done from a place of love” .

• Analysis (Text A): The emphatic “from a place of love” humanizes her severity, framing it as protective rather than punitive.

• Connect: In contrast, Hedda’s assertion of power is rooted in personal emptiness…

• Evidence (Text B): Hedda admits to Mrs. Elvsted, “For once in my life I want to feel that I control a human destiny” .

• Analysis (Text B): The hyperbolic desire “to control a human destiny” exposes Hedda’s craving for meaning, unmoored from care or compassion.

• CON: While Patricia’s agency is grounded in love and communal well-being, Hedda’s is motivated by boredom and self-gratification.

• Tie Back: This contrast underscores how feminism can manifest either in service of others or in pursuit of self-interest.

Body Paragraph 3 (COM)

• Point: Both texts use the domestic sphere as a site of gendered struggle.

• Evidence (Text A): Patricia secretly moves her family into a white neighborhood, arguing by action that “the logic of apartheid” cannot confine her children .

• Analysis (Text A): Though illegal under apartheid, this relocation dramatizes her refusal to accept spatial segregation—a domestic rebellion.

• Connect: Likewise, Hedda rejects conventional domestic duties…

• Evidence (Text B): She snarls to Tesman about Aunt Rina’s deathbed visit, “I don’t want to look at sickness and death. I must be free of everything that’s ugly” .

• Analysis (Text B): Hedda’s stark refusal to participate in caregiving reveals her revolt against the expectation that women be nurturing.

• COM: Both women claim their homes not as passive sites of service, but as stages for asserting autonomy—Patricia by physical relocation, Hedda by emotional withdrawal.

• Tie Back: In doing so, each text locates feminist resistance within the very spaces most often coded feminine.

Body Paragraph 4 (CON)

• Point: The stakes of these domestic rebellions differ: Patricia’s sustains life, Hedda’s portends ruin.

• Evidence (Text A): Patricia’s tough love aims to equip Trevor for a hostile world: “If the police get you, the police don’t love you” .

• Analysis (Text A): Her pragmatic toughness is a life-saving strategy born of maternal devotion amid systemic violence.

• Connect: But Hedda’s domestic revolt accelerates tragedy…

• Evidence (Text B): After orchestrating Lövborg’s downfall, Hedda laments, “Everything I touch seems destined to turn into something mean and farcical” .

• Analysis (Text B): The fatalistic metaphor of her own “touch” betrays how her rebellion corrodes relationships and ends in destruction.

• CON: Patricia’s challenge to domestic norms nurtures resilience; Hedda’s unmoored revolt fuels despair.

• Tie Back: Thus, each text offers a distinct vision of feminism’s potential—one life-affirming, the other catastrophic.

Conclusion

Both Born a Crime and Hedda Gabler use female protagonists to dramatize and contest the gender roles of their societies. Patricia’s fierce maternal activism and Hedda’s destructive repudiation of domestic womanhood map two poles of feminist resistance: one rooted in communal care, the other in self-interested autonomy. Together, they remind us that the struggle over gender roles can empower—and sometimes devastate—depending on how agency is wielded.