Themes Call Me Athena Colby Cedar Smith

Gender Roles and Expectations in Call Me Athena

The Thematic Claim

In Call Me Athena, Colby Cedar Smith examines the suffocating weight of gender roles and expectations during the early twentieth century, but she does not let them have the final word. The novel’s central thematic claim is that a woman’s desire for independence and self-determination can survive—and ultimately triumph over—the rigid social structures designed to contain it. This claim emerges not from a single plot point but from the interplay between Mary Skandalaris’s internal grief, her parents’ immigrant aspirations, and the author’s own framing of her grandmother’s real-life legacy.

Tracing the Theme Across the Story

1. The Brush Fire of Internalized Expectations (Chapter 1)

The novel opens with Mary’s meditation on grief, which she compares to a brush fire:

It begins / with a glowing cinder. / … it spreads / across the grass. / Once the spark grows, / it has a will / of its own. / … All you can do / is stand there. / With a useless / bucket in your hands.

While the passage explicitly describes grief, the metaphor also captures the insidious pressure of gender expectations. Mary lives in 1934 Detroit, a world where women are expected to marry, raise children, and accept their father’s or husband’s authority. The “glowing cinder” of societal demand—to be obedient, domestic, and self-sacrificing—ignites early. She kicks and stomps, but the fire spreads because the expectations are reinforced by everyone around her. The “useless bucket” represents the tools Mary has been given: a traditional female education, no economic independence, and a family that prizes security over her dreams. This opening image establishes that gender roles are not just external rules but internal fires that consume a woman’s sense of self.

2. The Author’s Revelation of Defiance (Author’s Note)

The author’s note provides the most direct evidence of Mary’s rebellion. Colby Cedar Smith writes that she composed the book for her grandmother Mary, who “became a successful businesswoman in the 1950s, when women usually never entered the boardroom. She rocked the pantsuit at a time when women were expected to wear aprons and pearls.” This single sentence flips the brush-fire image: instead of being consumed, Mary turns her fire into fuel. The author’s note reveals that Mary’s defiance was not a one-time act but a lifelong pattern. She “never let her misfortune hold her back and always summoned the courage to do what she needed to do, even when she was afraid.” This is the answer to the helplessness of the first chapter.

The note also reveals that Mary’s stories were “never the same twice,” suggesting that her identity was fluid and resistant to being pinned down by anyone’s expectations—including her own family’s. The author explicitly says she changed historical details “quite a bit,” but the core truth of Mary’s fight for independence is preserved. The theme of gender roles is thus both a historical reality and a narrative choice: Smith chooses to center her grandmother’s agency over the passive role society assigned her.

3. The RMS Olympic Manifest as a Symbol of Conflicting Expectations

The manifest from the RMS Olympic, reproduced in the author’s note, ties the theme to the immigrant experience. Mary’s great-grandparents, Giorgos and Jeanne, traveled to the U.S. seeking opportunity, but those opportunities were sharply divided by gender. For a Greek immigrant daughter like Mary, education and business ownership were often seen as threats to family honor. The ship itself—the Titanic’s sister—carries a double meaning: it is a vessel of hope and a reminder of the fragile line between aspiration and disaster. Smith notes that her own first name, Colby, appears on the manifest twice; she took this as “a sign [she] was meant to write the story.” This layered symbol shows that gender expectations are not just personal struggles but inherited burdens carried across oceans and generations. The manifest is a document of arrival, but it also anchors Mary to a past where women’s lives were recorded as names on a list, not as individuals with dreams.

Character Connections

  • Mary Skandalaris is the central figure of rebellion. Her internal monologue in Chapter 1 reveals the emotional cost of living under expectations, while the author’s note shows that the real Mary ultimately succeeded on her own terms.
  • Mary’s father (Greek immigrant) and Mary’s mother (French immigrant) represent the traditional forces that try to shape Mary into a “good” daughter. Their immigrant backgrounds likely heighten their desire for conformity and safety, making Mary’s independence feel like a betrayal.
  • Mary’s twin sister may embody the conventional path Mary rejects, or serve as a foil to highlight Mary’s uniqueness.
  • Giorgos Skandalaris and Jeanne Skandalaris are the great-grandparents whose journey is recorded on the RMS Olympic manifest. Their story frames the generational transmission of gender roles.

Symbol Connections

  • Brush Fire: From the brush fire symbol page, fire represents grief but also the uncontrollable nature of societal expectations. Mary’s struggle to “smother” the spark parallels her attempts to suppress her own ambition to please her parents.
  • RMS Olympic Manifest: The manifest is a record of migration and a map of gendered destiny. It lists people as cargo, affixing them to their histories. For Mary, this parchment is both a root and a weight: it proves her family’s arrival but also the cultural baggage they carried.

Complexity and Contradiction

The theme is not simple triumph. Mary’s grief in Chapter 1 suggests that fighting expectations comes at a high emotional cost. The same fire that drives her ambition also threatens to consume her. The author’s note admits that Mary eventually lost her memories to Alzheimer’s, raising a troubling question: if stories are our only way to remember resistance, what happens when the storyteller forgets? There is also a tension between the author’s creative license and historical fidelity. Smith changed events freely, which means the “defiance” we read is partly a romanticized reconstruction. Yet this very act of rewriting is itself a feminist gesture—the granddaughter refuses to let her grandmother be reduced to a silent ancestor.

Study Questions and Answers

  1. How does the brush fire metaphor in Chapter 1 connect to gender expectations?
    The brush fire symbolizes how gender roles start small (a “glowing cinder”) but spread uncontrollably. Mary’s feeling of helplessness with a “useless bucket” reflects how traditional tools—obedience, silence, marriage—are inadequate for stopping the pressure to conform.

  2. What does the author’s note reveal about Mary’s defiance that the novel’s fictional scenes might not show directly?
    The note confirms that the real Mary became a businesswoman in the 1950s, a decade when women were expected to stay home. It also stresses that she “never let her misfortune hold her back,” suggesting the fictional Mary’s grief is part of a larger arc of resilience.

  3. In what ways do the characters of Mary’s parents reinforce the theme of gender roles?
    Mary’s parents, as Greek and French immigrants, carry traditional expectations from their homelands. The father likely expects Mary to marry a suitable man and maintain the household; the mother may internalize these norms. Their opposition to Mary’s independence illustrates the generational conflict at the heart of the theme.

  4. Why is the RMS Olympic manifest a powerful symbol for gender expectations?
    The manifest records migrants as names on a list—a bureaucratic view of human beings. For women, such documents erased individuality and reduced them to family units. The presence of the author’s own name on the manifest adds a meta-layer: the granddaughter reclaims the story that the manifest helped render invisible.

  5. What is a notable contradiction in the way the novel treats gender roles?
    The novel celebrates Mary’s defiance, yet the brush fire metaphor suggests that resisting forces beyond one’s control can be destructive. Additionally, the author’s fictionalization means the “true” story of defiance is partly invented, raising questions about authenticity versus narrative power.