Woman on a Roof by Essay

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He stood there. She said nothing. She had simply shut him out." Tom waits: "saying nothing at all, for some minutes. He thought: 'She'll have to say something if I stay.' But the minutes went past, with no sign." Tom has fantasized that he can be tenderer than the other workmen, and therefore he assumes the woman will be more forthcoming to him than to his crude companions. Like the other construction workers, this 'Peeping Tom' cannot separate fantasy about what they call this modern "Lady Godiva" from reality: it does not occur to him that the woman has a sense of her own sexuality, independent of his feelings of her: like the real Lady Godiva, he feels she should only disrobe for a reason, to satisfy male desire.

The story suggests that Tom's sentimental feelings about the woman are just as unreal as the pornographic scenarios created in the minds of Stanley and the other men. The men view the woman's actions with a mix of paternalism and propriety, and act as if men 'own' all women and as if women cannot make decisions about their bodies.

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"I bet her old man put his foot down," said Stanley, when the men think that the woman is not on the roof one day. In actuality, she is merely on a different section of roof, to hide from them, which indicates that she has been sunning herself to enjoy the weather, not engaging in an act of exhibitionism, as they assume.

The women who meet with the workmen's approval are women who are appropriately deferential, like the middle-aged woman who waters her flowers within their view: "the woman came to water a yellow window box opposite them. She was middle-aged, wearing a flowered summer dress…They exchanged pleasantries, and she left them with a smile and a wave." Because she is not like 'Lady Godiva,' or the woman in the bathing suit, she is praised. Women must be cheerful and flirtatious, regardless of how they actually feel, in the moral code of these males.

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