After Leroy’s trucking accident, his wife Norma Jean becomes their family’s breadwinner, and their gender roles begin to shift. While Leroy is homebound, making crafts and dreaming about homemaking, Norma Jean is out working, lifting weights, taking night classes, and developing an independent life. This shift in gender roles benefits Norma Jean, who becomes empowered to leave an unfulfilling marriage and seek a better life. But it creates tremendous anxiety in Leroy, who feels emasculated and unable to picture a future for himself, preferring to dwell in a mythical past. Set in the early 1980s, the story suggests that the era of women’s liberation often affected men and women differently, making men feel insecure or anxious about their roles while allowing women to chase new, independent lives.
Right off the bat, the story establishes several ways in which Norma Jean and Leroy’s gender roles have reversed. In the past, whenever Leroy was home from his trucking job, Norma Jean performed the role of a traditional wife: she would stay at home with him, cooking all his favorite foods. But now that he’s home for good, she’s no longer acting like a housewife: she’s constantly away at work, earning money while Leroy recovers. And whenever she is home, she makes her own favorite foods and she spends time on her hobbies while neglecting the housework. Norma Jean’s new hobbies emphasize her shifting role. Her passion for bodybuilding (a pastime that is traditionally gendered male) signals her commitment to strength and independence. And her writing class shows that she’s trying to finally find her own voice rather than saying or doing what she feels is expected of her.
Leroy, meanwhile, is having an opposite experience. His trucking job required strength and independence, and he has spent much of his life alone on the road while handling a dangerous rig. But his injury has confined him to the home—he can no longer earn a living, he’s physically weak, and he spends his days pining for his absent spouse, placing him in a position that would be traditionally considered feminine. Underscoring this sense of emasculation are Leroy’s new hobbies: to pass the time, he gets into needlepoint, string art, and macramé—craft projects that are traditionally gendered female. Furthermore, he often daydreams about the log cabin he wants to build for Norma Jean, showing how his thoughts have turned to homemaking. It’s Norma Jean, not Leroy, who seems to have independent ambitions outside of marriage.
These shifting gender roles make Norma Jean feel powerful, freeing her to chase the things she’s always wanted out of life. For example, Norma Jean begins talking to Leroy more excitedly about her job at the cosmetics counter of the local pharmacy. While this is a traditionally feminine job, it gives her the confidence and independence of a breadwinner. This is apparent when she boasts to Leroy about her ability to stand behind the counter all day on her “strong feet,” framing the job as physical and demanding and drawing attention to her strength and endurance. In another scene that shows Norma Jean coming into her own power, she tells Leroy that his name means “the king.” When Leroy sheepishly asks if he’s still the king of the house, Norma Jean deflects his question and brags that her own name is derived from the Normans, powerful 11th-century conquerors. It’s clear from this interaction that Leroy is not the king of the house; Norma Jean is in charge now. And she finally uses her power at the end of the story when she walks away from Leroy as he’s pleading with her not to end their marriage. This shows that she feels free to simply walk away from a conversation—and a marriage—that doesn’t suit her anymore.
While their shifted roles allow Norma Jean to claim her independence and create a new life, this role reversal emasculates Leroy. In one incident, his mother-in-law Mabel mocks him for doing needlepoint, and he insists that “all the big football players on TV” also needlepoint. This is an improbable claim, but by invoking an icon of masculinity—a professional football player—he shows that he’s defensive and insecure about his own masculinity. In another moment, Norma Jean suggests that he apply for a bunch of jobs that he physically can’t do anymore, such as working at the lumberyard. This makes him feel useless—especially when Norma Jean points out her own ability to stand up all day at work. To make himself seem capable, Leroy insists that he’s going to build Norma Jean a cabin, which is both physically implausible and a backhanded admission that he’s actually focused on their home now, not on finding a job. Since Leroy is uncomfortable and emasculated in his new role, he has trouble imagining his future. He envisions only implausible scenarios, including building them a log cabin—a style of house that Norma Jean finds repellent. Leroy’s fixation on building an antiquated log cabin shows his desire to return to a past in which Norma Jean still loved him and he was still the man of the house. But the story makes clear that this log cabin will not get built, suggesting that their new roles are here to stay.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Gender, Independence, and Power ThemeTracker
Gender, Independence, and Power Quotes in Shiloh
Leroy Moffitt’s wife, Norma Jean, is working on her pectorals. She lifts three-pound dumbbells to warm up, then progresses to a twenty-pound barbell. Standing with her legs apart, she reminds Leroy of Wonder Woman.
“I’d give anything if I could just get these muscles to where they’re real hard,” says Norma Jean.
“They won’t let you build a log cabin in any of the new subdivisions,” Norma Jean tells him.
“They will if I tell them it’s for you,” he says, teasing her. Ever since they were married, he has promised Norma Jean he would build her a new home one day. They have always rented, and the house they live in is small and nondescript. It does not even feel like a home, Leroy realizes now.
Something is happening. Norma Jean is going to night school. She has graduated from her six-week body-building course and now she is taking an adult-education course in composition at Paducah Community College. She spends her evenings outlining paragraphs.
“First you have a topic sentence,” she explains to Leroy. “Then you divide it up. Your secondary topic has to be connected to your primary topic.”
To Leroy, this sounds intimidating. “I was never any good in English,” he says.
She sits at the kitchen table, concentrating on her outlines, while Leroy plays with his log house plans, practicing with a set of Lincoln Logs. The thought of getting a truckload of notched, numbered logs scares him, and he wants to be prepared. As he and Norma Jean work together at the kitchen table, Leroy has the hopeful thought that they are sharing something, but he knows he is a fool to think this. Norma Jean is miles away. He knows he is going to lose her. Like Mabel, he is just waiting for time to pass.
“Your name means ‘the king,”’ Norma Jean says to Leroy that evening. He is trying to get her to go to Shiloh, and she is reading a book about another century.
“Well, I reckon I ought to be right proud.”
“I guess so.”
“Am I still king around here?”
Norma Jean flexes her biceps and feels them for hardness. “I’m not fooling around with anybody, if that’s what you mean,” she says.
“Would you tell me if you were?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does your name mean?”
“It was Marilyn Monroe’s real name.”
“No kidding!”
“Norma comes from the Normans. They were invaders,” she says.
At Shiloh, she drives aimlessly through the park, past bluffs and trails and steep ravines. Shiloh is an immense place, and Leroy cannot see it as a battleground. It is not what he expected. He thought it would look like a golf course. Monuments are everywhere, showing through the thick clusters of trees. Norma Jean passes the log cabin Mabel mentioned. It is surrounded by tourists looking for bullet holes.
“That’s not the kind of log house I’ve got in mind,” says Leroy apologetically.
“She won’t leave me alone—you won’t leave me alone.” Norma Jean seems to be crying, but she is looking away from him. “I feel eighteen again. I can’t face that all over again.” She starts walking away.
General Grant, drunk and furious, shoved the Southerners back to Corinth, where Mabel and Jet Beasley were married years later, when Mabel was still thin and good-looking. The next day, Mabel and Jet visited the battleground, and then Norma Jean was born, and then she married Leroy and they had a baby, which they lost, and now Leroy and Norma Jean are here at the same battleground. Leroy knows he is leaving out a lot. He is leaving out the insides of history. History was always just names and dates to him. It occurs to him that building a house out of logs is similarly empty—too simple. And the real inner workings of a marriage, like most of history, have escaped him.
Leroy gets up to follow his wife, but his good leg is asleep and his bad leg still hurts him. Norma Jean is far away, walking rapidly toward the bluff by the river, and he tries to hobble toward her. Some children run past him, screaming noisily. Norma Jean has reached the bluff, and she is looking out over the Tennessee River. Now she turns toward Leroy and waves her arms. Is she beckoning to him? She seems to be doing an exercise for her chest muscles. The sky is unusually pale—the color of the dust ruffle Mabel made for their bed.
