Sewing and Cooking Class
Sewing and cooking are situated as symbols of womanhood in the context of being what girls were taught at school. The stereotypical nature of such gender expectations also become symbolic of Ruth’s contrarian personality as she rejects the idea that girls should just naturally be limited in their educational potential.
Sawing and Shop Class
Saws and other tools associated with shop class are, by contrast, symbols of manhood by virtue of being taught to young boys at the exclusion of female pupils. Her preference to learn about shop tools makes saws, especially, symbols of the systemic limitations of the American educational system as applied to gender conventions and expectations.
Turkey Dinner
Turkey dinner is presented as a symbol of the inherent idiocy of gender role expectations. An image of Ruth’s husband Marty carrying a large tray for serving the turkey he cooked for dinner is accompanied by text indicating that their friends of their kids often look confused when told that their mother argued cases before the Supreme Court while their father prepared holiday feasts. The insanity inherent in this confusing makes it a multi-leveled symbol: it is a symbol of exceeding lowered expectations for women as well as a symbol indicating the widespread expectations that men are useless in the home caretaker role.
Handwriting
One of the more bizarre aspects of the history of the educational system is the none-too-brief legacy of deciding that left-handed students were….stupid, deformed, defective, the devil? Who knows what was going through the minds of those in charge. Regardless, for an exceptionally long period, very authoritarian means were engaged to forced left-handed students to learn to write only with their right hands. While it is beyond all imagination to suppose that young Ruth was the only natural southpaw to rebel, it is not a leap of imagination to interpret this rebellion as elementally symbolic in her development of a mind almost preternaturally inspired to dissent against lapses in simple logic, no matter how widely popular the illogic had become.
Nancy, Amelia and Athena
The world of possibilities for women is opened up for young Ruth in the library where stories of strong independent women were often able to escape the censorship so prevalent elsewhere. The fictional detective adventures of Nancy Drew, the true life heroics of aviator Amelia Earhart and the fantastical myths of the goddess Athena become symbols of what is possible beyond the limited constraints of systemic sexism, chauvinism and patriarchal fear controlling the world beyond the library.
