Fences, a play written by August Wilson, delves into the life of Rose and Troy Maxson, a married Black couple in 1957. Rose, a Black woman who remains at home for the duration of the play, takes care of Troy, and longs for a strong familial bond. Troy, a Black man ten years older than her, works to provide for Rose and their two sons. Wilson utilizes gardening and growth to represent Rose’s measure of success and happiness, and equating the impact of society's harsh gender divides to a lack of growth and consequent pain. Ultimately, both Rose and Troy must determine just how much they are willing to sacrifice to reach their desires and overcome the setbacks that gender roles impose, which Rose is able to while Troy is not.

   Rose's garden failing to grow represents the impact of societal oppression on her as a female and mother, resulting in her definition of an unsuccessful life; a dismal home lacking stability and love. Being a woman in this time period, she had to marry Troy to avoid “running the streets” with a “succession of abusive men” (Wilson 5). Although she initially entered her marriage out of necessity, she still hoped to make something out of the relationship. Appearing through a gardening metaphor, it is evident that she attempts to grow love and trust between her and Troy, which proves unsuccessful. When Troy admits to having an affair, she cries out that she gave up “eighteen years” to stay with him, having “planted” all of her “feelings…wants and needs, my dreams” inside Troy, yet his soil was “hard and rocky and it wasn’t never gonna bloom” (Wilson, 70-71). With immense care, gardening creations can flourish into something beautiful, therefore Wilson conveys the growth of plants as symbolizing fruitful success and prosperity. Rose wished to have aspects within her life by “planting” her hopes for a happier and more stable family into Troy, however, plants can only grow in the right environment. By illustrating that her hopes were “never gonna bloom” with Troy, Wilson emphasizes how unfulfilled she felt in creating that idealistic, joyful life women were expected to have. The pressure to conform to those ingrained standards forced Rose into a life that was far from blossoming, where she sacrificed her happiness for that broken, unattainable facade. 

   However, as illustrated through Troy’s wildly growing infidelity and repressed dissatisfaction, societal gender roles were equally as detrimental to Troy, and consequently affected Rose in the process. Growing up with an abusive father and an absent mother figure, Troy approached his roles as a father by falling back on what he’d seen men do in the past; purely providing monetary security for his family and nothing further emotionally. Society taught him that a “man gotta take care of his family” because it’s his “responsibility”, which is “all [he’s] got to give” (Wilson 38, 40). This tireless work leaves him increasingly unable to separate his affection for his family from his role as provider, which creates a buildup of repressed unhappy emotions and leads to him regarding his marriage as that “responsibility”—the beginning of his infidelity and disloyalty towards her. Wilson represents this buildup through the metaphor of wild overgrowth. Troy conveys how he “tried to be a good husband” to Rose in the only way he “knew how”, yet his dissatisfaction simply “grows on you till it gets out of hand”, starting out as a “little bush…and the next thing you know it’s a whole forest,”  (Wilson 69, 66). Those repressed feelings emerge into a bursting “forest” as he copes with the pressure of finding happiness while trying to fit into a role he isn’t even sure how to define. Giving into those emotions but not knowing how to tame them, how to trim down the forest, he simply avoids confronting it through cheating. Rose later describes Troy as a man of “hard and rocky” soil in which nothing could bloom, revealing how Troy’s actions impacted her as well. Through the motif of a rapidly growing, wild forest, as well as its hard and rocky soil, Wilson conveys how the harsh standards of what men are expected to be can negatively impact Troy to the point of no return.

   Through the meaning of Rose’s name and Raynell’s garden, Wilson conveys how it’s only when Rose searches within herself for what she really wants and defies gender roles that she finds peace, juxtaposed against Troy, who merely sinks further into his decay and discontent. When Rose emotionally removes Troy from her life and raises Raynell, she's finally able to be truly content for the first time in her life. Through gardening with Raynell and assuring that “it’ll grow”, Rose teaches Raynell to plant and nourish her own self-love (Wilson 91). Making sure not to follow in the footsteps of how Troy has behaved in the past, Rose fulfills her own dream of having a positive family environment by showing affection and love to Raynell. This is something she could not achieve with Troy around—even though society told her she must have a husband in order to be happy. Through defying those gender norms, she found her happiness all on her own. The rose flower symbolizes both beauty and resilience, yet is accompanied by its own thorns. By embracing those thorns and realizing she didn’t have to give up “pieces of [herself]” to be happy, Rose is able to finally bloom, to find her own inner beauty (Wilson 98). Oppositely, Troy never stops to question his perception of what he needs to be as a man, leading to his joy withering until the day he dies. The two character’s process their emotions in starkly different ways, as Rose attempts to solve her problems by giving too much while Troy pulls away and gives barely enough. The contrasting character arcs of Rose and Troy supports the larger idea that not all gender norms should be followed, and that one must not let their life be determined or destroyed by the limitations of those gender roles set by society. Rather, one must search for what truly makes them happy, even if it means defying what’s societally expected of them. 

   Wilson utilizes the motif of gardening to expand on the confines of gender stereotypes. Illustrated through the sacrifices Rose gave and the decisions Troy made, Wilson depicts their contrasting character arcs to reveal how individuals cope with the impacts of the limited gender roles that our American society has set. This is achieved through Rose finally breaking through those barriers and being able to flourish on her own, juxtaposed against Troy, who is never able to climb out of the hole that society’s expectations have dug for him. In America, rigid gender roles and racism implanted by white society that is still lasting to this day often drags Black men and women down with feelings of worthlessness—which needs to stop.   

  Wilson utilizes the motif of gardening to expand on the confines of gender stereotypes. Illustrated through the sacrifices Rose gave and the decisions Troy made, Wilson depicts their contrasting character arcs to reveal how individuals cope with the impacts of limiting gender roles that our American society has set. This is achieved through Rose finally breaking through those barriers and being able to flourish on her own, juxtaposed against Troy, who is never able to climb out of the hole society’s expectations have dug for him.