Ann Petry's Mrs. Hedges from The Streer

Ann Petry’s Mrs. Hedges: A Challenger Appears from the Confines of Disabled Femininity Throughout The Street Ann Petry thematically examines the possibility of coexistence between the maintenance of personal virtue and morality with the achievement of the capitalistic successes of the American Dream. This is evident in Lutie’s vice grip onto virtue and her dualistic violent slaying of Boots, but is especially poignant the prostitution profiteer Mrs. Hedges. She is constantly portrayed in …

…disabled women as Thomson states, she exists as a woman within the confines of femininity, as is suggested in Junto’s unwavering attraction to her noted in his gift of a wig. Mrs. Hedges challenges society’s relegation through not wearing Junto’s foisted wig and being attractive, but by continuing to wear her bandana, being exploitative of fellow women and not transgressing into the ‘territory of men’, and being physiologically strong while corporally disabled.