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Part I: Bedtime Story
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in This Is How It Always Is, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gender and Binaries
Secrets and Misunderstanding
Violence and Discrimination
Storytelling
Family
Summary
Analysis
Claude speaks his first full word, “bologna,” when he is just nine months old, and when Rosie tells the doctor this at his well-child checkup, he gently laughs at her. Babies don’t talk at nine months, the doctor says, calling Rosie “Mom.” This always irritates her. The kids’ doctor doesn’t call Penn “Dad,” but everyone calls her “Mom.” They must teach that in pediatrics, Rosie thinks, because she was never taught such a thing. If she had been, Rosie would have told them it is completely offensive. Calling the mothers of patients “Mom” has an unspoken message, which says that doctors know kids better than their mothers, who, as women, are “slightly hysterical.”
Rosie’s experience with the pediatrician reflects the sexism present in American society. The word “bologna” is distinct—Rosie clearly isn’t confusing babble with mama or dada. Plus, as a doctor herself, which surely her pediatrician knows she is, Rosie is well versed in how and when babies develop and talk; however, the pediatrician still treats her like she doesn’t know what she is talking about and is prone to craziness or “hysteria.”
Themes
Claude does everything fast. He is crawling at six months, walking at nine, and at age three, he writes and illustrates a series of books about a puppy and panda detective team. For Rigel and Orion’s birthday, Claude makes them a three-tiered cake, and when he grows up, he wants to be a farmer, a dinosaur, a scientist, and a girl. “Sounds great,” Penn and Rosie say to Claude, telling him he can be anything he wants to be when he grows up. One day, Clause asks Rosie if girls can be farmers and scientists. “Of course,” Rosie says, “I’m a girl scientist.”
Claude assumes that girls can’t be farmers or scientists because those jobs are traditionally associated with men, hinging on the sexist idea that such professions are too strenuous, physically and intellectually, for a woman. Obviously, such assumptions are nonsense, and Rosie points this out by reminding Claude that as a doctor, she is a scientist. Claude’s desire to be a girl and his interest in traditionally feminine activities, such as baking, begins to suggest that his gender identity is at odds with the gender he was assigned at birth.
Themes
One day, Penn asks Claude why he wants to be a girl scientist and not just a scientist, and Claude says because he wants to wear a dress under his lab coat. For Ben’s birthday, the boys put on a play, and Claude is the princess. He refuses to take his princess dress off for the entire weekend, and on Monday morning, he tries to wear it to school. When Rosie tells Claude to put on his school clothes, he throws himself on the floor and starts to cry. He is dressed for school, Claude says, and he is wearing his princess dress.
Again, Claude’s desire to wear a dress when he grows up, his role as a princess in the play, and his refusal to take off the dress each suggest that Claude’s gender identity—the gender he feels on the inside, at his core—is different than the one he was assigned at birth. The tantrum Claude throws when made to take off the dress implies that Claude’s feelings, often called gender dysphoria, are very distressing. Claude identifies as a girl, it seems, and he wants his clothes to reflect this.
Themes
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Rosie quickly invents an excuse. The princess dress is too formal, she says. Claude is happy with this explanation. He didn’t know it was too formal; he will find a more appropriate dress after school. Rosie says they will talk about it later, and on the way out the door, Claude asks her if she will teach him to do the laundry and ironing. “That’s Daddy’s job,” Rosie says to Claude. Now, Claude says, it is his job. “Real ladies wear clean, pressed dresses,” he says.
Claude’s belief that “real ladies wear clean, pressed dresses” again reflects society’s sexist assumptions. Such assumptions dictate that women be impeccably dressed and tend to domestic chores, like ironing and laundry. Obviously, this narrow ideal is not realistic, and Rosie, again, is evidence of this.
Themes
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