Examine the presentation of women in AHWOSG

Throughout the novel, Eggers presentation of women differentiates due to his constant judgement towards others. However, it is evident that he holds his mother closest to his heart and seeks parental figures anywhere he can. Egger uses uncommon phrases to describe his mother but nevertheless, they’re endearing words. He calls her a ‘vase, doll and prize winning vegetable’ suggesting he sees her as fragile and not to be tampered with.  The connotations of the noun ‘doll’ would be innocent like and harmless. However, he also refers to her as a ‘giant fruit’ which slightly changes the ‘delicate’ pattern because the adjective ‘giant’ doesn’t really sound flattering next to ‘fruit’.

When Eggers is at Toph’s school he writes how he is ‘looking to score’ showing his immaturity and lack of respect toward women. The lexical field of ‘sex’ is ambiguous because it may express his teenage hormones or possibly suggest he yearns to start a family of his own.  Dave talks about a woman not ‘wearing a ring’ then goes on to say how he wonders if they could ‘move in together’ hinting at the fact that maybe he just wants to recreate the family he is slowly losing. Then again, his misogynistic nature is shown slightly when he says he ‘expected’ flirting. The verb ‘expected’ makes it almost seem like he felt he deserved an abundance of ‘pretty’ women for him. Rather than ignorant, Eggers made it sound like a naïve statement as Dave was genuinely surprised he was wrong.  In the beginning of the novel, the scene where Dave’s mother is having a nosebleed seems quite intense to him. Dave says ‘we’ are having a nose bleed instead of ‘she’. The use of the pronoun ‘we’ shows that he feels the pain too and his mum’s illness is affecting him more than he’s letting on.

Dave also seems to feel a large sense of guilt towards Beth because he believes they were almost a burden on her. He says ‘Beth being as much or more owed than Toph and I’ which expresses his gratefulness towards her for caring for them all. The verb ‘owed’ emphasises how much she deserves something good after dealing with ill parents and faced with the possibility of becoming an orphan. The conjuction ‘and’ when talking about Toph and Dave links them together to convey the strong relationship between the two. Eggers also writes about the slight guilt felt towards Kirsten who is sort of helpless in the situation. Dave’s thought process screams jumbled especially when he says ‘how much should I/can I/ will I burden Kirsten?’ The use of an interrogative shows he is uncertain and confused on what to do. When Dave panics, he also tends to take a slight judgemental attitude to others. For example, after witnessing a small thing, Dave managed to use extremely negative adjectives towards the girl like ‘misguided and self centred and also a bad person’ without really knowing who she is. It seems Dave has to care for a woman a lot for him to treat them with the utmost respect.

There is quite a balance with the presentation of women in AHWOSG but it is obvious who is respected and who is not. The women Dave knows and feels he owes are the ones who he treats kindly most of the time and doesn’t degrade them whereas random women, he will feel no remorse in completely judging their character. Whether it’s because he is not in the right state of mind with everything he is going through, or it is genuinely how he is as a person, he doesn’t fail to express his thoughts about women throughout the novel.