Repressing Challenges to Order

Repressing Challenges to Order

The rigid structure of society reinforces order and promotes conformity of all classes, but an individual contradicting established customs poses a threat. Shirley Jackson, the author of The Lottery, conveys that rebellious impulses of humans are repressed by society to maintain a rigid social order.

The lottery enforces an unfair distinction in class status between men and women. Women are subordinate in the social power structure of the village, as shown when Mrs. Hutchinson's family is chosen in the first round. Objecting that her daughter and son-in-law "didn't take their chance," (562) Mr. Summers reminds her that "daughters draw with their husbands' families," (562) showing that power is exclusively held in the hands of males in families. Women, as inferior housewives, must submit to their husbands' power over them because as men in the work force, they link to the community economically and provide for family. Mrs. Hutchinson, however, rebels against this male domination. Arriving late, she raises suspicions of resistance to everything the lottery represents. When her family name is called, she pushes her husband, "Get up there, Bill." (561) In doing so, she acts rebelliously, ironically contradicting custom by reversing the accepted power relation between husbands and wives. In her name Hutchinson, Jackson alludes to the religious reformer Anne Hutchinson, who, because she was a woman preacher, was considered a threat to society and strict Puritan laws. She was banished from her society, as Tessie is stoned and eliminated. In this way, Jackson shows that rebellion of a place in society is repressed.

In addition to the reinforcement of a firm division between the genders, the institution of the lottery maintains the structure of society by motivating work. A fear is instilled that lack of productivity will cause one to be selected in the next lottery and banished from the common group. The village reveals this fear in their questions after the first round: "Who is it? Who's got it? Is it the Dunbars? Is it the Watsons?" (562) The Dunbars and the Watsons are the least productive families in the village, with Mr. Dunbar's leg broken and Mr. Watson dead. This