Grief and Gender Roles in Robert Frost's Home Burial and Bobbie Ann Mason's Shiloh

Although different in style and form, Bobbie Ann Mason's "Shiloh" and Robert Frost's "Home Burial" both demonstrate the distance that grows between two couples that have lost a child and how it manifests itself in a communication breakdown between husband and wife. "Shiloh"'s Norma Jean and "Home Burial"'s Amy both find themselves in similar positions: their husbands' mourning period seems shorter and less fervent than their own. Thus, both women interpret their husbands' mourning as inferior to their own. The couples' miscommunication between husband and wife occurs due to conflicting gender roles. It is not until the wives transcend these gender roles that they can healthily transcend their grief.

The loss of their baby creates a noticeable void in both the relationship of Norma Jean and Leroy, and that of Amy and her husband. Norma Jean and Leroy hardly ever see each other until Leroy finds himself unemployed. During Leroy's unemployment, the couple still spends a considerable amount of time apart for two people who live together. In their own forms of escape, Norma Jean works full-time and attends class while Leroy smokes marijuana. When the couple does manage to carve out "alone time," Norma Jean's mother infringes upon them to lecture or complain. In "Home Burial," the distance between the couple is also clear. Amy chooses to confess her feelings to someone outside of the marriage (A friend? A romantic interest? There is no evidence toward one or the other) instead of discussing her grief with her husband. Amy should be able to talk about a catastrophe they experienced together instead of turning to someone with no firsthand connection to the baby's death, but, sadly, that does not happen. Both couples discover that the husband and wife are at different places-and nobody can be at two places at one time.

"Shiloh" and "Home Burial" explore this distance in terms of gender. In both cases, when the baby dies, the woman becomes at least temporarily immobilized on a very visible level. For Leroy and Amy's husband, however, the impact the baby's death influences their lives in a less immediately obvious way. It is hard for Norma Jean and Amy to transition from mothers to childless women because they have planned their lives around motherhood, whereas society has taught Leroy and Amy's husband not to exclusively identify themselves as fathers. This is largely due to the idea of spheres of influences: men take care of women and women take care of children. After the baby's death, Leroy and Amy's husband can still take care of their wives, but Norma Jean and Amy lose their primary responsibility of caring for a child. This societal script concerning parenthood and gender roles propels the husband and wife to approach their child's death antithetically.

Norma Jean and Leroy confront their baby's death by taking two divergent paths. Leroy immerses himself in his work as a truck driver. Thus, he finds the opportunity to physically, mentally, and emotionally escape the truth of his marriage and his abruptly terminated fatherhood. Norma Jean, meanwhile, as the housewife, must remain at home where she faces constant reminders of her child's absence. When her mother mentions a story about a neglected baby killed by a dachshund in casual conversation, for instance, Norma Jean goes ballistic. Norma Jean tells Leroy: "She just said that about the baby because she caught me smoking. She's trying to pay me back...The very idea, her bringing up a subject like that! Saying it was neglect" (Mason 832). She automatically assumes that her mother is criticizing her for neglecting her baby and that is why the baby died. In contrast, Leroy does not face the same pressure of acknowledgement that Norma Jean does. Nobody on the road ever brings up the issue of infant death to Leroy because everyone he encounters is a stranger. If the topic of dead babies comes up, it is only because he mentions it.

Norma Jean attempts to challenge the cult of domesticity, however, by striving toward self, not just home, improvement. The fact that Norma Jean decides to attend school for instance, a traditionally masculine realm, evidences that she is breaking free and therefore asserting her individual identity. She wants to prove that she is separate from the home and, by saying that she will leave Leroy, Norma Jean proves that she is separate from him. She is not property or an accessory. The reason why she so fervently rejects Leroy's offer of building a log cabin is because she views it as another trap of domesticity, another superficial association of Norma Jean with the home.

It is important to note that Norma Jean only attempts to explore her own identity once her child has died. Since she can no longer classify herself as a mother, Norma Jean must figure out what new label best suits her. Even though Leroy can no longer classify himself as a father, he does not suffer a similar identity crisis. Again, in Western society a mother must see herself as first and foremost as a mother. A father must see himself as first and foremost as a man.

Amy and her husband choose divergent grieving paths, as well. Amy is shocked that her husband does not outwardly display his mourning the way she does. She does not realize that when he buried his baby, he buried his morning in the most masculine way possible. Symbolically, masculinity is inherently connected to the earth because God created Adam from the soil. Yet Amy does not share the same connection with the earth because, according to Genesis, Eve grew from Adam's rib. She therefore does not seek solace in it. On a more literal level: While Amy sees nothing more than the literal act of her husband burying the baby's corpse ("I saw you from that very window there,
/Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
/Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly/
And roll back down the mound beside the hole" [Frost 78-81]), her husband views it as a physical release for his pain. Amy tells her husband: "You can't because you don't know how./If you had any feelings, you that dug/with your own hand-how could you?-his little grave." (Frost 75-77) because she cannot understand his way of coping. She cannot understand because her identity, like Norma Jean's, is tied with motherhood, not herself as an individual (although this changes later on for both women in their respective stories).

Amy is so set in traditional gender roles that she does not dare venture into the outside world, the male sphere, until the very end of the poem. When Amy gazes out the window at her baby's grave at the beginning of the poem, she demonstrates her passive, stereotypical feminine behavior. Her home traps her, just as Norma Jean's home cages her. The reality is, however, that as a free woman and the mother of a dead child, Amy has every right to leave her home and visit her baby's grave. It is up to Amy to embrace her freedom because her husband, or anyone else for that matter, cannot do that for her. It is a personal decision that requires a personal journey.

When a mother's lifestyle no longer applies to them, Norma Jean and Amy must undergo a complete reincarnation to overcome their grief. Norma Jean takes over fifteen years to truly make significant life changes, like embracing a rigorous exercise system and go to night school. She eventually decides to leave Leroy, which illuminates the fact that he did not marry the person she is now. The reader does not see how Amy copes with the grief and miscommunication other than when she storms out of the house at the end of the poem. The reader can infer, though, that based upon the intensity of their argument, Amy is prepared to make serious changes in her marriage and in her life.

Part of the reason why the women strive to change is because they cannot balance their gender role and their personal authenticity at the same time. The two identities are so muddled that they struggle to express themselves as individuals. Norma Jean, for instance, has trouble honestly revealing her true self to her husband, so she chooses to behave mysteriously when Leroy comes home after losing his job. Because he cannot crack the enigma, Leroy instead projects his own fantasy upon Norma Jean and his relationship with her. He imagines that they share something, when, in reality, they share very little anymore:

"Norma Jean works at the Rexall drugstore, and she has acquired an amazing amount of information about cosmetics. When she explains to Leroy the three stages of complexion care, involving creams, toners, and moisterizers, he thinks happily of other petroleum products-axle grease, diesel fuel. This is a connection between him and Norma Jean. Since he has been home, he has felt unusually tender about his wife and guilty over his long absences. But he can't tell what she feels about him" (Mason 826)

Amy's husband may be more perceptive about misunderstanding his wife in saying:

"My words are nearly always an offense.
/I don't know how to speak of anything
/So as to please you. But I might be taught,/
I should suppose. I can't say I see how./
A man must partly give up being a man
/With womenfolk." (Frost 52)

But he still fails to provide a solution for their dissolving marriage. It is the women who end up recognizing the need for modifications if not outright revolution.

Now that Leroy no longer works and finds himself at home full-time, Norma Jean must adjust to him infringing upon her territory. When Leroy was regularly on the road, Norma Jean viewed the home as her own; there was no confusion about her role. Now that Leroy has been emasculated by no longer being able to support his family, Norma Jean must assume a dominant role in order to swing the marriage back into balance. She works toward de-feminizing herself by seeking personal fulfillment outside of the home. When Norma Jean discovers that this strategy does not improve her relationship with Leroy, that the death of their child has driven them apart, she chooses to leave the union. This is the only option that will preserve Leroy's masculinity and Norma Jean's femininity. Once Leroy and Norma Jean are single, they no longer have to worry about conforming to the gender roles that Western society imposes upon married couples. Amy seeks a listening ear outside of the marriage because she realizes that her husband cannot be that person, but that she must express her grief regardless.

Although these two pieces take place during starkly different time periods, "Home Burial" and "Shiloh" make it clear that the women are making big changes in their lives following the deaths of their children. "Home Burial" occurs in 1915, between the Victorian era and the Roaring Twenties. The Edwardian age still encouraged traditional gender roles and allowed women few opportunities for independence and vocalization of their opinions. "Shiloh" happens during the 1980s, a decade that emphasized female empowerment, especially educationally and professionally. Ultimately, both women manage to assert themselves as individuals, separate from their home, their husbands, and their roles as wife and mother in a way appropriate for their time. They accomplish this by retaliating against their husbands' and society's expectations for them.

In the case of Norma Jean, her retaliation is very apparent. She starts attending classes, exercising regularly, reading voraciously, and openly disapproving of Leroy's choices. The most potent example of Norma Jean's born-again self occurs when she rejects Leroy's repeated offer to build her a log cabin. Leroy, however, comes late to this understanding: "And the real inner workings of a marriage, like most of history, have escaped him. Now he sees that building a log house is the dumbest idea he could have had" (Mason 836). At this point, he realizes that the Norma Jean he thought he knew does not exist. The real Norma Jean is confident, decisive, and her own person, not just a prop for Leroy's log cabin.

Amy, meanwhile, asserts her individuality by simply leaving the argument with her husband. Edwardian society would have deemed such a reaction unacceptable because people of the time demanded that women obey and listen to their husbands without exception. In Amy's case, however, she cares so little about her husband's words that the walks out of the house. She finally decides to enter masculine territory by venturing into an environment outside of her home.

Despite differences in their derivative time periods and forms, Robert Frost's poem "Home Burial" and Bobbie Mason's short story "Shiloh" are remarkably similar in terms of their feminist undertones. Both pieces explore the complications inherent to a marriage that has witnessed the death of a child. These complications stem from communication problems driven by society's expectations of gender roles within marriage. Sadly, the only solution either piece offers the principal female is to abandon the marriage.

Bibliography

Frost, Robert. "Home Burial." VCU Blackboard.

Mason, Bobbie Ann. "Shiloh." Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. (pgs. 826-836).