Midnight Assassin Stereotypes

All throughout the history of the world there has always been the issue that man is superior to woman. This has been an ongoing fight that women of all races and ethnicities have been faced with in some way or form. In Patricia L. Bryan and Thomas Wolf’s nonfiction novel Midnight Assassin, the authors portray Mrs. Hossack’s as a weak feminine character, this causes her trial to be slanted due to her presumed feminine traits: through the lenses of feminism, this brings the issue of categorizing women to fit specific profiles to the light of the reader. To expand, the term feminism has been used vaguely and not many people understand the true ideals of the movement. Feminism is the advocacy of woman’s rights fighting for equal roles as men …show more content…
Hossack is viewed as a farm wife that is controlled by her aggressive husband. Many members of the community knew how rough Mr. Hossack was to his family and others around. “Margret Hossack had told many of her neighbors that she was afraid of her husband and that he’d frequently threatened her and her children”(Bryan and Wolf 30). This is one example from the text that shows how truly scared Margret is of her husband. Mr. Hossack is not a much liked character in the town. This is one factor that led to Mrs. Hossack getting off of the hook for the murder of her husband. The people of the town sympathize for her, because she could not afford to support her family if she every chose to divorce him. In this time of the story divorce was hardly a thing anyone ever thought about because of how strict people were about the laws of marriage. Mrs. Hossack is trapped in a miserable life because of her husband, and there is nothing she can do about …show more content…
Hossack did not wake up during the attack on her husband even though she was laying right next to him. It is hard for them to believe that she slept through that whole thing. “If a woman were startled and frightened in the night, wouldn’t her first thought, her natural instinct, be to call upon her husband for help?” (Bryan and Wolf 28). This quote indicates that a woman should rely on her husband to protect her all the time because he is a man. In this case Mrs. Hossack is scared of her own husband so why would she call upon him for help? This is another example of the stereotypes of the relationship of man and women. Although Margret seemed to have a motive in killing her husband because she claimed so many times that she hated him and wanted him dead, the people of the community could not believe that she would ever hurt him. In her case, she benefited from the sexist opinions of the jury that set her