If everyone were affected by the same cognitive bias as my father we wouldn’t see older women walking around with hands full of inherited rings.

That’s how inheritance works, of course - a ring isn’t passed down until its owner dies. Obviously, to his mind, the ring itself is bad luck. First it belonged to an auntie of his - an auntie who died.

I never see that ring again, because my father insists it’s cursed.

A year or so later, Nana is killed by a car while crossing the road to buy milk at the dairy. Nana goes to her bedroom, comes back with a ring and says, “See this ring? That’s yours when I die.” I can’t really see the ring from where I sit on the floor, but I nod obediently. I’m four or five, sitting on the carpet in the living room at my Nana’s house. Using qualitative thematic analysis, the current article argues that contrary to critical claims about Juana being a stereotyped female character who plays a marginalized character in the novella, her character has a more dominant role in the narrative and has better agency as compared to female characters in other fictional works of Steinbeck.This story reminded me of a half-forgotten memory. These qualities redeem her humanity as a female in a patriarchal postcolonial world where women are mostly seen as lacking in several human traits and are thus relegated to an inferior subjugated position. The present paper analyzes key positive characteristics of Juana that give her a superior role in the novel despite her silence during most of the narrative. However, in his novella “The Pearl”, Steinbeck portrays Juana more sympathetically, although not completely judiciously, as a female character who shows resolution, resourcefulness, wisdom, and foresight par excellence in comparison to her short-sighted and impulsive husband Kino. Glaring schematic differences between male and female characters in his fiction have led some scholars to charge him of misogyny. His female characters often lack fully developed three-dimensional personalities and remain subservient to the desire and plans of the male characters. Since the publication of his first novel “Cup of Gold”, the fictional production of John Steinbeck has remained in focus for literary critics for its diminishing and essentialist portrayal of female characters.

Steinbecks the pearl