The charge against Wilder of sex discrimination is perhaps overblown. Indeed, while parceling out meaningful work to his male characters, he anchors his female characters within the stifling backwaters of "woman's work," notably schoolteaching, child care, housework, and farm chores. Both Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibbs depict marital relationships which are obviously onesided affairs in which the husband dominates the decision-making process. And Mrs. Gibbs willingly allows her husband to select the destination of family vacations and to browbeat her about her evening at church as though she were a child needing his permission to be out on the town streets after dark. On the other hand, women were still disenfranchised in 1901 and did not obtain the right to vote until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. Therefore, the acquiescence of Julia Gibbs, Myrtle Webb, and Emily Webb Gibbs to housewifely anonymity seems appropriate to the time and place. It is, by today's standards, unfortunate that George is privileged to make the decision not to go to college while Emily — who is a demonstrably more promising scholar — seems not to have the same choice. Still, young women of Emily's day, particularly those in rural locales, were fortunate just to finish high school.
It is perhaps more significant that Wilder gives no details about Emily's death. Certainly, women died in childbirth at a greater rate in 1913 than now. Such a happening would have seemed commonplace, as does Wally's death from a burst appendix or Mrs. Gibbs' fatal pneumonia. It is odd, however, that the playwright makes no mention of the fate of Emily's infant, especially since he indicates the whereabouts of Emily's fouryear- old son on the day of her burial.
