"Let me go too, let me go too!" and Henry stopped the truck and they took him in. I shut the gate after they were all gone.
Laird is allowed to go with the other men because he is a man (though still a boy) himself. Brutality was only reserved for men. Women were supposed to be delicate and carefree.
"Your poor father,"
Women were supposed to be sympathetic when it came to understand what men did (the work they did, the responsibilities they had, the effort they made). Not the other way around.
"Girls don't slam doors like that." "Girls keep their knees together when they sit down." And worse still, when I asked some questions, "That's none of girls’ business."
This is basically a manifesto of how women were supposed to behave.
"Oh, that there Laird’s gonna show you, one of these days!" Laird was getting a lot bigger.
Men cannot be defeated by women, especially when it comes to physical strength. It was a matter of time for her brother to show her how things are "supposed to be".
She was always plotting. She was plotting now to get me to stay in the house more, although she knew I hated it (because she knew I hated it) and keep me from working for my father.
Men are simple and plain, while women can be ill-intentioned and trechearous
"And then I can use her more in the house," I heard my mother say. She had a dead-quiet regretful way of talking about me that always made me uneasy. "I just get my back turned and she runs off. It's not like I had a girl in the family at all."
As she grows up, she is expected to become more involved with "women's chores" and break away from men's.
She would tie her hair up like this in the morning, saying she did not have time to do it properly, and it would stay tied up all day. It was true, too; she really did not have time.
Women were supposed to take care of the household chores, even if it meant that they had to neglect themselves (she didn't even have time to fix her hair).
She looked out of place,
Another example of gender roles: women did not belong in the same workplace as men. Only the latter were expected to do certain types of jobs (especially those related to physical strength). The place of women was the house—even smaller than that, the kitchen.
Nevertheless I worked willingly under his eyes, and with a feeling of pride.
She feels proud when working "under his (her father's) eyes. She is happy because she is subjected to a man, who approves of what she does (the idea of women subjected to the will of men is closely related to the depiction of gender roles). When she refers to the chores she does with her mother, her feelings are different.
My father did not talk to me unless it was about the job we were doing. In this he was quite different from my mother, who, if she was feeling cheerful, would tell me all sorts of things – the name of a dog she had had when she was a little girl, the names of boys she had gone out with later on when she was grown up, and what certain dresses of hers had looked like – she could not imagine now what had become of them
In this section, another trait of men and women can be seen: men are reserved, they keep to themselves, let; they do not talk about their feelings, that is not "manly". Women, on the other hand, are naturally talkative.
Everything was tidy and ingenious; my father was tirelessly inventive and his favourite book in the world was Robinson Crusoe.
The way she sees her father (inventive, intelligent), very much unlike the way she sees her mother and the work she does (dull and boring) is an example of gender roles. Men could be the inventive ones, while women could only do boring, unskilled chores
These stories were about myself, when I had grown a little older; they took place in a world that was recognizably mine, yet one that presented opportunities for courage, boldness, and self-sacrifice, as mine never did. I rescued people from a bombed building (it discouraged me that the real war had gone on so far away from Jubilee). I shot two rabid wolves who were menacing the schoolyard (the teachers cowered terrified at my back). Rode a fine horse spiritedly down the main street of Jubilee, acknowledging the townspeople’s gratitude for some yet-to-be-worked-out piece of heroism (nobody ever rode a horse there, except King Billy in the Orangemen’s Day parade)
Again, this shows how she is still not aware of her role as a woman, and dreams of being a hero and saving other people (something which can be "expected" of men). It is by the end of the story, once she has started to understand how the world works, that her dreams change and she is saved by others (men) instead.
But we had rules to keep us safe.
At this stage of the story, she is still unaware of the idea of gender, and its implications for her and her brother. They work together to find ways to fight fear they are both feeling. By the end of the story, though, when they are a little older, her brother calls her singing stupid, and she never attemps to do it again. She is affected by her brother's comments and unconsciously accepts his "male" view as true.