t home doing nothing
             while the women are the ones working at the beauty shop making money for
             the family. This is a contradiction to what 'was expected at the time,
             women were usually the ones at home holding the house together and the men
             would go to to work and were the sole household providers. Welty in the
             short story is alluding to the life of women during the war when they
             started to take on the responsibility of the men and the women in their
             families. Welty demonstrates that men are not needed in order to run and
             keep a family going because Mrs. Pike and Leota take on characteristics
             that are often used to describe males. These actions were also seen during
             the Civil War when the women encouraged their husbands to enlist,
             consequently revealing the confidence women had in themselves to manage the
             household, fields and businesses by taking jobs in local industries and
             working on the farms themselves (The New Georgia Encyclopedia 1). It was at
             this time that the female percentage of the U.S workforces increased from
             27 percent to about 37 percent (History 1). The actions of women during
             wartime match the actions of the female characters in the "Petrified Man"
             which was published in 1941, two years after the war started. This is an
             indication that Welty could have been writing a satirical story about
             ...