Research Paper on:
Gender Criticism and Hand To Mouth A Chronicle of Early Failure by Paul Auster

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that the stereotypical gender roles reflected in his parents marriage had a charismatic effect upon him. As such, Auster may not have cultivated a balanced perspective in relation to  gender understanding, opting instead to abide by an involuntary yet preprogrammed emotional detachment from the opposite sex. This observation, one might readily surmise, provides for a significantly better understanding  as to why Hand To Mouth bestows such a strong sense of one-dimensional, unappealing and lifeless characterizations. Austers father held tremendous influence over  him; as a child, Auster was torn between the consumerist tendencies of his mother and his fathers perpetual depression era attitude toward spending. Constantly torn between his fathers frugality  and his mothers generosity, Auster came to associate this vast separation to every other area of their marriage. Watching his mother and father interact from two such distinctly different  arenas gave him a persistent sense of uneasiness; not realizing how this would ultimately impact his gender perception, Auster inevitably and inadvertently leaned in the direction of gender segregation.  "...Much as I adored my beautiful, endlessly charming mother for dazzling the world as she did, I also adored my father for resisting that same world. It could be  maddening to watch him in action--a man who never seemed to care what others thought of him--but it was also instructive, and in the long run I think I paid  more attention to those lessons than I ever realized" (Auster 19). The patriarchal impression emblazoned upon Austers psyche might be construed as the primary reason why women are conspicuously  minimized throughout Hand To Mouth. This decidedly instinctive response represents the culmination of how he, like so many other childhood and adolescent males before him, has been indoctrinated by