Gender Stereotypes In The Dinner Party By Mona Gardner

People are stereotyped at least once in theirs lives whether it’s directly or indirectly, but most of the time it isn’t the truth. The Dinner Part is a short story that has an example of stereotyping. A hostess and host are throwing a party. A colonel begins topic about gender stereotypes between some guests at a table. One women disagrees with his statement. Meanwhile, a cobra sneaks into the house where only the hostess and an American guest realize it. Intentionally leaving out the fact that there is a cobra in the room, he heroically makes a plan and saves everybody. In the short story “The Dinner Party” by Mona Gardner, the author expresses gender stereotypes can lead to false assumptions.

People we see everyday have once in their life

stereotyped others good or bad. The colonel states, “ ‘A women’s unfailing reaction in any crisis is to scream.’One woman objects to this ” (8). The colonel has just stereotyped people not in race or appearance, but in gender. Some people believe this is true about women and some believe otherwise. Most of the time a woman’s first instinct in a certain situation is to scream, but not all women do. Some might be more fearful than others, but you shouldn’t make a claim unless everyone will support it especially when it isn’t 100% true in certain situations
On page 10, we learn that Mrs. Wynnes is able to control the urge to scream because the American questioned how she knew the cobra was in the room. Mrs. Wynnes felt it crawl across her foot. She had just experienced a situation where she could have screamed at the top of her lungs, but was able to resist. Mrs. Wynnes might not have had much control if she was a guest and wasn’t hosting, but being able to control your instincts is a skill that takes time to develope, which Mrs. Wynnes has the ability to do.
Stereotyping is something that will probably happen over and over and over again. It is something that can’t just immediately be stopped, but something that we can be more careful about. Sometimes, stereotyping can be offensive because it isn’t true for a specific person, but it can also be partly true for others. Just because people have something about them that lead them to being stereotyped, it doesn’t mean we should start to develope assumptions. In any condition, gender stereotypes could lead to false assumptions.