Theme of Gender in Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff Literary Analysis Essay Sample

Emma Watson, a famous actor and a widely known women's rights activist, questioned "How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation” at a UN Speech on the HeForShe campaign (2014). Gender plays an essential role in how people act and are treated in the world every day. How gender affects people's lives every day is especially present in the characters’ lives in the novel Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff. In the novel Jolly, who is a seventeen-year-old single mother to two kids, Jermey and Jilly, takes LaVaughn, a struggling teen trying to pay for college, as a babysitter. However, both Jolly and LaVaughn have money struggles and they learn throughout the novel how hard life can really be, especially for women in their area. When Jolly ends up getting fired after she was sexually assaulted, both she and LaVaughn develop more problems, not only with money, but also dealing with the constant pressures that come from being women, as well as the challenges of dealing with two small children. Because the two main protagonists are both women, it makes their lives significantly harder, with more struggles and more stress in their lives. Gender shapes characters in Make Lemonade by changing their career opportunities, how they are seen as parents, and their overall path of life. 

Gender shapes Jolly and LaVaughn career opportunities. Firstly, LaVaughn is limited in her future career choices. LaVaughn talks about her goals to work at a desk job where she has her own calendar and she can have her own cabinet with files, plus about how she wants to complete college successfully before starting her job (23). Because LaVaughn is a girl, she feels limited in her future opportunities because women have been stereotypically depicted as working in fields such as secretaries. Additionally, Jolly is nervous about finding work because she was sexually assaulted at her last job. After Jolly was touched “way up under [her] shirt” at her last job where her boss “put his big old smelly wet mouth all over [her] face”, she is nervous about seeking out work because she fears that she will once again be assaulted at the hands of the company's authority (57). Because of the misconduct and unprofessionalism that Jolly's boss exemplifies by violating her personal space and later firing her, she is fearful that future employers may repeat this sexist behavior. Lastly, LaVaughn has limited views on the types of work she can do. All of LaVaughn’s “friends [go]for house cleaning” and she sees “a note that [says] / BABYSITTER NEEDED BAD'', and decides to take a chance on babysitting (4). LaVaughn limits herself in the jobs that she thinks that she can do because of her subconscious gender stereotypes. She believes that she should only be doing domestic work such as cleaning and babysitting. Make Lemonade demonstrates a world in which opportunities can be determined by gender just as much as they can be determined by the skill set of potential employees.

Similarly to how the characters’ career opportunities are shaped by gender, gender also affects how LaVaughn sees Jolly as a parent. Firstly, LaVaughn, even though she is also a girl, does not understand the hardships that Jolly endures as a single mother of two. When Jolly expresses her anger about LaVaughn not understanding how when “some guy gets [a girl] down where he wants them”, the girls cannot do anything about it, LaVaughn starts feeling bad about her harsh judgment of  Jolly as a parent (132). Jolly has certain expectations put upon her as both a woman and a mom, LaVaughn sometimes does not empathize with Jollys struggles because she does not appreciate how hard it is for Jolly to play a maternal and paternal role for her two young children. Secondly, LaVaughn thinks that Jolly is an irresponsible mom. Jolly explains to LaVaughn that she was impregnated when a man drugged her, leaving her in a vulnerable state. (154). Because of the stigma about teen mothers being irresponsible for getting pregnant at such a young age, even LaVaughn, Jolly's biggest supporter throughout much of the novel, questions whether Jolly is a fit parent. Finally, Jolly does not have any family other than her kids. LaVaughn is confused and shocked when Jolly reveals she “doesn't have folks” because in her opinion “nobody” has relatives (33). LaVaughn believes that since Jolly does not have any relatives, that she might simply not have role models who have taught her how to properly raise her children due to the lack of a motherly role model in her own life. LaVaughn sees Jolly as a parent differently due to gender.

In addition to LaVaughn seeing Jolly as a parent differently, gender shapes Jolly and LaVaughn’s paths in life. Firstly, both LaVaughn and Jolly try to do everything they can for Jermey and Jilly. Jolly feels anger towards LaVaughn after she comments about how disgusting Jolly’s “kitchen floor is” and calls LaVaughn “Miss Perfect”, and then Jolly grows frustrated about how LaVaughn got to take “Jermey [on] rides [on] the bus”. Jolly and LaVaughn both try to become everything they can for the kids because subconsciously they feel like since they both are girls, they need to become a great strong presence for the kids. Secondly, Jolly did not understand everything she had to go through growing up. Jolly describes her life growing up and talks about how she “got her period [and] she did not know what it was” plus how then “some lady took her to the girls’ [bathroom] and showed her what to do” (151). By having this lady take her under her wing and show her how to take care of herself and make sure that she knew her period was natural and nothing to be worried about, gave Jolly a sense of how to become a stronger woman. Finally, Jolly tries to change her life for the better and become stronger because of a story she remembers. The story Jolly talks about is how a blind woman with hungry kids went to buy them an orange, but when this woman gets attacked, one of the boys switches the orange with a lemon, but the woman does not stress and decides to make her children lemonade (169-72).  Jolly uses the lemon story to influence the choices she makes as a parent because when reflecting on the story she realizes what she's done wrong and is tempted to follow in the footsteps of the blind women not only because she too is a single mother, but because she sees how the women pushes through what is hard for her and tries to make her parenting better based on it.

Through the way they see their future options for careers, how they parent, and how they live their lives, Jolly and LaVaughns lives are shaped incredibly by gender. Without the gender roles and stereotypes forced in Make Lemonade, Jolly would have never gone back to school and started a new life for herself and LaVaughn would have never learned from the experiences she had to go through. Because of what Jolly goes through throughout the novel, she allows herself to think more about her future and her career, which inspires LaVaughn to do the same. Jolly ends the book becoming a better mother by learning to not only cater to her children's needs, but her own too. Gender factors play a role in how people view their own life and shape them to become the people they are. For the people whose lives are greatly affected by gender, they often are influenced by the roles they are “expected” to have and could be affected by the way they are viewed as a society, how they are treated, and their future careers. But by not letting gender control the way they live the world can become a welcome place and can make everyone feel like they have a seat at the table.