The morning after Ponyboy comes home following his and Johnny’s running away has a hint at gender roles and the modified roles Ponyboy and his brothers take on now that they are orphans. “The first one up has to fix breakfast and the other two do the dishes. That’s the rule around our house […]” (Hinton 104). Ponyboy and his brothers have lost their parents and live on their own, and their home situation is anything but typical. Ponyboy states that the first brother awake must make breakfast, and continues to describe what each brother prefers for their meal, and the other brothers will clean up. These tasks are typically seen as the duties of a female, and in particular, a mother. The mother, especially in a time frame such as in The Outsiders, would be the first awake to make breakfast, and would wash the dishes and clean the house after. But because there is an absence of a mother figure in the boy’s lives, they have replaced the duty from a mother to the earliest woken brother. Later on in the chapter, it is shown that Derry does the laundry/ironing for the brothers, further indicating the switching of duty. The gender roles have a fluid state for the Curtis boys in The Outsiders.
I am using the Speak Platinum edition of The Outsiders.
