Representative of one of the few rebellious voices in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" who protest unthinking tradition, Tessie Hutchinson, who has drawn the card with the black dot, complains against her being chosen as the victim, declaring that the lottery is "not fair."
But, perhaps, as a symbol, Tessie stands for the oppressed woman in a male-dominated society. For one thing, in the arrangement of the lottery, women are assigned to the households of their husbands and are given little voice. And, it is the man who draws the slips:
'There goes my old man,' Mrs. Delacroix said. She held her breath while her husband went forward.In an instance of delineating female from male authority, Jackson writes that when Mrs. Martin calls over her son Bobby,
he ducked under his mother's grasping hand, and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones....By now, all through the crowd there were men holding the small folded paper in their large hands, turning them over and over....
Not only are Tessie's protests ignored by the man in charge of the lottery, Mr. Summers, but they are given no consideration by her husband, Bill Hutchinson. When Mr. Summers says, "Show us her paper, Bill," Tessie's husband offers no objections; instead, he forces the slip of paper out of her hand, and holds it up for all to see. The other women, who must "stand by their husbands" make no protest on her behalf, also demonstrating their repression.
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