Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks challenges Western gender stereotypes through several characters. Fleur Pillager defies expectations of feminine traits by displaying strength and controlling men. Margaret Kashpaw also shows strength and an intimidating personality. Nanapush reflects on the ability of women to give birth and relates to their suffering in a feminine way. Ultimately, the character of Father Damien, who was born Agnes DeWitt, most challenges gender roles by living as a Catholic priest despite being a woman. Erdrich creates characters that expose the social construction of gender expectations.

1. LOUISE ERDRICH:
CHALLENGING
WESTERN IDEAS ON
GENDER IN TRACKS

2. CHALLENGING WESTERN IDEAS ON
GENDER
 In Western society men and women are expected to
display certain characteristics based upon their sex.
 Women are stereotyped as delicate, domestic and
feminine.
.

3. Men are assumed to be strong and unemotional.
However, Western ideologies about gender characteristics
have been socially constructed, and they do not always prove
to be true.

4. TRACKS BY LOUISE ERDRICH
 Louise Erdrich challenges Western stereotypes of gender
characteristics
 Exposing contradictory ideas about gender
characteristics
 Challenges to preconceived Western gender ideologies

5. FLEUR PILLAGER
 She most noticeably defies Western ideas of
stereotypically female characteristics.
 .The passage in which Fleur first appears reads:
 “She was wild as a filthy wolf, a big bony girl
whose sudden bursts of strength and snarling cries
terrified the listening Pukwan” (Tracks,3).
 Erdrich uses the words “big” and “strength,”
both of which Western society normally attributes
to men.
 Fleur seems to have control over men.

6.  As Nanapush narrates, he explains: “She knew the
effect she has on men, even the very youngest of
them. She swayed them, sotted them, made them
curious about her habits, drew them close with
careless ease and cast them off with the same
indifference” (Tracks,16-17).
 uses her sexuality to seduce men but cares little for
them.
 shows power and little concern in her relationships
with men.

7. MARGARET KASHPAW,
 Margaret again shows strength and endurance in a
female character. In The Last Report on the Miracles
at Little No Horse Father Damien describes his first
encounter with her:
“Her glance dried laughter, her hard snakelike
impenetrable glare shook men to the core…There was
something both frightful and seductive about her cold
temperament” (93).

8. NANAPUSH
 He is an older Native American.
 A storyteller
 In the Native American tradition, a trickster like
Nanapush “are androgynous” and “could assume either
sex”

9.  When he reflects on losing his children, he
says:
“Many times in my life, as my children were
born, I wondered what it was like to be a
woman, able to invent a human from the extra
materials of her own body. In the terrible
times, the evils I do not speak of, when the
earth swallowed back all it had given me to
love, I gave birth in loss. I was like a woman
in my suffering, but my children were all
delivered into death.” (Tracks, 167)

10. FATHER DAMIEN
 the character that most obviously challenges gender
roles in the novels of Louise Erdrich is Agnes DeWitt,
who later becomes Father Damien
 The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse.
The story centers on Father Damien, who is actually
Agnes DeWitt. She changed her identity to fulfill
what she felt was her destiny.
 Agnes’s identity as Father Damien does not betray
her identity as a woman.
 Keenan points out that she is not “transgendered in
the sense of feeling that her female body is a mistake
of birth that belies a fully masculine psyche”

11.  Gregory objects by saying:“‘you are a woman’”
(206), and Agnes responds with: “’I am a priest’”
(206).
 Gregory continues to argue, insisting, “’a woman
cannot be a priest’”(206).

12.  When playing cards Nanapush asks her:
“What are you?” (230). Agnes says she is a priest, and
Nanapush asks her to clarify: “A man priest or a
woman priest?” (230).
 “Later, she understood it was the simple recognition,
that level and practical regard that moved her to weep
with relief. Nanapush was sorry, very sorry to make
the priest cry, but he said anyway, abruptly, ‘Your
move’” (231).