Under a Painted Sky

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.

Samantha and Annamae are aware from the start of their journey that, as girls traveling alone, they are vulnerable and noticeable. They want to travel safely, but they also want to travel invisibly because they are both being pursued by the law. They decide to disguise themselves as young male teenagers. This means that they must not only deal with the physical challenges of disguising themselves as male, but also the emotional and social aspects that are involved in the gender expectations of the 19th-century American West. Lee often presents these expectations as binary differences between males and females: Men and boys are meant to be brave, strong, and independent, while women and girls are meant to be frightened, weak, and submissive. Samantha and Annamae negotiate these challenges, and through their actions, Lee draws attention to the performativity of gender roles.

Each girl faces different challenges when disguising herself as a boy. By discussing these challenges, which frequently revolve around biological attributes, Lee demonstrates how 19th-century gender roles are tied to one’s sex. For Annamae, the main problem lies in binding her breasts with a ribbon. Lee also mentions more intimate issues, such as menstruation, bathing, and calls of nature. Samantha uses quick thinking to explain the need for privacy: “It is not custom for Chinese and, er, Africans to make water in public. In fact, it’s disrespectful to … our ancestors” (104). Lee highlights the intersections of issues surrounding gender/sex and race here.

Lee also highlights the intersections of gender and class in the novel. Annamae’s life as an enslaved person has made her more independent and self-reliant than Samantha, whom she tells, “I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time. Practically a man already” (43). On the other hand, Samantha’s middle-class background and family structure have protected her more than Annamae’s enslaved status. Her background plays a part in her feelings about disguising herself as a boy. Her upbringing, which emphasized qualities of politeness and modesty, taught Samantha a feminized gender role that she struggles to shake off. Samantha must work on the way that she walks and talks, which are too feminine. Relatedly, West and Cay are both attracted to the ruffled blouses and ringlet curls of the French girls’ femininity, which is also attached to class.

Lee inverts gendered tropes by having Samantha and Annamae appear and behave in masculine ways. In doing so, she challenges these tropes. For example, Andy has practical skills, such as cooking and sewing, that are usually associated with women. However, in homosocial settings, where groups of males exist separately from females, these skills are often performed by men. So, it is not seen as suspicious that Andy can sew and cook, just as it would not seem unusual for male sailors, cowboys, trappers, or gold miners to have these skills. Samantha’s education and musical training are other examples where the book challenges gender roles. She knows that a classical education such as hers is normally given only to men. Annamae tells Samantha that her father gave Samantha the violin because he believed in her, because “only men play the fiddle” (13). Samantha’s significant skill challenges this gendered expectation.

The resolution of the novel within a marriage plot for Annamae exemplifies the social expectations of the period despite the ways in which the novel highlights the resilience and courage of the two female characters; however, Lee leaves Samantha’s future ambiguous, suggesting an alternative to this social expectation.