In the novel Music for Torching by AM Homes, married couple Paul and Elaine find their relationship to be as static and boring as the Westchester County suburb in which they live. Dissatisfied with their marriage and fearful of a lifeless future, they vent their frustration with the suburbs through misleading sexual encounters, abusive verbal spats, and bouts of jealousy directed at their seemingly perfect friends and neighbors. Desperate for change in their lives, Paul and Elaine purposely set fire to their house, but it doesn't burn as completely as they had planned. Rather, their home is dirty and damaged as they are forced to reconcile with their actions. Having neither money nor resources to move, their family continues to live in the soot-filled house, selling many of their clothes and possessions. Paul and Elaine spend a few nights at the home of their friends Pat and George Neilson, whose house is always spotless and everything is in perfect order. The idyllic nature of the Neilsons' home seems to exacerbate the problems between Paul and Elaine, as they often argue and see each other as frauds and inferiors. Through these intense narrative twists, Homes dissects the concept of the ideal American lifestyle, exposing the shortcomings of traditional gender and family roles within the home. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay When we consider gender roles, one of the best known is the mother's role as cook and housekeeper. Stereotypes would have you believe that a woman's job is to have children and take care of the house; cleaning, doing laundry and cooking meals. Elaine from Music for Torching exemplifies this lifestyle, as the book opens with her husband Paul berating her about the amount of fat in her dinner. As the novel continues, Paul berates his wife who "stands at the sink, in an apron and Playtex gloves, trying to protect herself" (Homes 1). Elaine embodies the cliché of the helpless wife. She is an awkward mother who cannot satisfy her husband and attempts to "make everything right" (Houses 1) by maintaining a nice house, a feat at which she repeatedly fails. It becomes obvious throughout the story that Elaine was not born to be a stay-at-home mother. She is a terrible cook, doesn't like cleaning and doesn't find satisfaction in living at home. Because she is forced to play this role that she does not want to play, she comes to resent her home and everything it represents. Driven by the need to escape and spurred by her inability to prepare dinner, she encourages Paul when he spills a lighter liquid on their house, and she herself kicks the grill, marking the finality of her decision to leave all the problems in their life in their hands. The ashes. However, when the house fails to burn, Elaine is distraught. Homes states that “Elaine is sitting in the car, thinking she's back to ground zero, zero, square one. It's back to square one, only now it's worse. Now he will have to take care of the house, look after her like a sick person. Imagine running away; where would it go? In the woods to live like a wild woman feeding on berries and nuts? In town to sleep on a steam grill? He thinks about running away. He unbuckles his seat belt. He is about to open the door when he sees Paul return. She sees Paul coming and imagines herself speeding down the street: the streetlights constantly catch her as headlights. She sees Paolo chasing her, without knowing why she runs, why he chases her, except that it is his instinct that catches her, drags her back” (Case 29). By burning down the house, Elaine was trying to escape her role as caretaker of the house. But now that the house is standing,destroyed, it's just another thing she'll have to deal with. She not only takes care of the needs of her children, her husband and her parents, but now she must do all this while rebuilding the house she hates so much. Furthermore, the burned house now reflects Elaine's feelings about her marriage to Paul. She knows he uses her for food and sex, she knows he has multiple affairs with other women, and she knows he doesn't value her as a partner or wife. However, their marriage is still stubbornly standing, just like their house, yet it is full of holes and filth. Elaine imagines what it would be like to escape, but she has only ever known one role in life; wife and mother. He has no idea what he would do if he left his home and his marriage, because as bad as they are, they are the only things he has a strong connection to. In this passage, Elaine questions why she and Paul continue to promote the facade of their love. She imagines running away from him but doesn't know why, and he chases her for no other reason than it has to be the right thing to do. Paul's instinct is to drag her back home despite both being dissatisfied with their situation. However, they both strive to be the ideal couple and know that divorce would ruin their reputation among their wealthy friends. The reason they are together seems to be based entirely on the idea that they have familial roles to play as parents and lovers, and that separating from that would make them outcasts from society. As Elaine is struggling to fulfill her place as wife and mother, so too is Paul striving to behave like the ideal man; strong, protective and stoic. Paul is shown to have a weak character, as he cheats on his wife, lies to his children, and acts immorally in many ways without remorse. Even though Paul knows that his actions are wrong, he does not want to expose himself as a person with flaws because this would damage his position as a man. Paul continually needs to prove himself smarter and stronger than Elaine, and although she makes it clear that she is aware of his misdeeds, he pretends that he can get away with anything. After the house fire, however, Paul realizes that he can no longer simply pretend that there are no problems in their lives. Homes states that “The house is not something with which Paul can make a virtuous and virile show of Mr. Fix-it. There's no way to reach out and turn a loose screw, saving them a house call from a handyman and seventy-five dollars. The house isn't even like a radio that you can dismantle with the enthusiasm of learning how things work, confident that you can put every diode back in place. Paul never fixed anything. And he reminds himself that he did it, he carried it forward; without stopping for a moment to ask himself whether it was possible to rebuild it or not, he destroyed it. Worse, and this is the part he didn't admit to anyone, he had a blast. It was invigorating, it was bloody fantastic” (Homes 90). Paul is used to being the man of the house, the person who can perform physical tasks and act as the ultimate masculine figure. In this case, however, Paul realizes that his actions are not something he can fix using any kind of manliness. While his family previously relied on him to solve simple problems - tightening screws, fixing radios - he knows he can't repair the damage done to their home alone. Again the house serves as a symbol of his marriage to Elaine. He used to put minimal effort into the relationship, just fixing little things as they came up, but now serious damage has been done and he can't just brush it away. It will take real hard work and cooperation to rebuild both his home and his marriage, and Paul is coming to the conclusion that he enjoyed the destruction..