Gender and Race Theme Analysis

In “Like a Winding Sheet,” Petry demonstrates just how closely entangled issues of race and gender can be. As the narrative unfolds, Johnson, the protagonist, endures a racially antagonistic encounter with his plant's white forewoman, and believes he is denied coffee by a white waitress on account of his race. He ultimately beats his wife, Mae, (possibly to death) for playfully echoing these same racist sentiments. Both of Johnson’s interactions with white women produce fantasies of violence that play out in his mind, but which he knows he can never enact. Instead, he takes out his intense frustration on his own African American wife, despite beginning the story as a man who adored Mae and was “not made” to threaten or strike a woman. This desire to exercise his power creates an increasingly fraught scenario revolving around the intersection of gender and race. Petry shows that although Johnson is the victim of racial violence, he himself perpetuates gendered violence. The dissonance between his struggle against abuse from white women and his subsequent violence toward Mae thus suggests that black women like Mae are ultimately the foremost victims of both racism and sexism.

Though Johnson is clearly racially oppressed throughout the story, he also holds sexist ideals and wants to exert power over women. At the beginning of the story, Johnson knows that “a lot of men might have” resorted to threats of violence when dealing with Mae's reluctance to leave the house, but doesn't feel the need to subscribe to this socially-mandated version of masculinity. Yet Johnson does feel secure in the knowledge that, as a man, he has the physical strength to beat his wife if he wanted to. He seems to feel a sense of superiority in choosing not to act abusively, and despite not feeling able to do so, he still defines his masculinity by this latent power. He acknowledges that his position as a man means he has the opportunity to act either way, even if his own character dictates that he refrain from threats of violence. This need to feel power over women extends outside the home, as exemplified by his evident distaste at having a female superior at work: “He could never remember to refer to her as the forelady even in his mind. It was funny to have a white woman for a boss in a plant like this one.” The fact that he struggles with this “even in his mind” suggests a profound intellectual discomfort with the idea of ceding power to a woman.

This need to feel power over women creates tension in Johnson’s interactions with white women, as his position as an African American means that these women can claim power over him on account of his race. The forewoman pelts Johnson with racial abuse in an effort to humiliate him and establish a sense of authority over him, stating, "Every guy comes in here late always has an excuse. [...] And the niggers is the worse.”  Not only does this racial slur antagonize Johnson, but it also emasculates him since she is a woman, prompting him to resort to the threat of violence by “[stepping] closer to her” with clenched fists. This can be interpreted as an unconscious move to remind the forewoman of the physical power associated with his masculinity. Later on, Johnson explicitly takes comfort and even pleasure from imagining the sensation of beating the forewoman, making specific reference to her femininity by mentally conjuring up “the soft flesh of her face […] under the hardness of his hands.” Petry creates an echo of this interaction in Johnson's later interaction with the waitress. Johnson fixates on the casual way in which she tosses “the length of her blond hair from the back of her neck as expressive of her contempt for him,” with the long blond hair epitomizing both her whiteness and her femininity. Once again feeling emasculated, this time Johnson mentally takes even more explicit pleasure at the thought of enacting violent revenge on her femininity: “What he wanted to do was hit her so hard that the scarlet lipstick on her mouth would smear and spread over her nose, her chin, out toward her cheeks.” Here, Petry blurs the images of lipstick and blood, creating a fetishized picture of female pain which Johnson relishes as a means of combating his feelings of humiliation and emasculation.

Each of these examples shows how Johnson channels his experience of racism into violent, sexist frustration, which he ultimately unleashes and directs at Mae. Through this chain reaction, Petry emphasizes the heightened misogyny that black women are often forced to endure. While both the forewoman’s and the waitress’s racial privilege protects them from Johnson's rage in public spaces, as a black woman in the privacy of her own home Mae is afforded no such protection, as Johnson takes out his rage by beating her instead. Mae is effectively used as a safer stand-in for the forewoman and the waitress. As a black woman and in private rather than in public, Mae is vulnerable to Johnson's attack as there are fewer consequences for him abusing her. Since the racism that Johnson experiences throughout the story is presented as socially acceptable, the reader can infer that society would be less sympathetic toward Mae as a black woman than toward the white women whom Johnson really wanted to abuse. By showing how Mae suffers immense violence (and possibly even loses her life) for something as minor as a playful comment, Petry suggests that black women experience both racism and sexism on a level far more severe than black men or white women, respectively.

Through the unjust beating of Mae, Petry illustrates how damaging discrimination can be—particularly when the realms of racism and sexism intersect. The combination of violent masculinity along with racial discrimination creates a completely toxic environment, in which black women have to bear the brunt of a socially-ingrained cycle of violence.