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Chapter Four of Typhoid Mary was very interesting. It mostly dealt with the perceptions and prejudices of Mary Mallon by George Soper. He constantly degrades her calling her unlady like and pointing out her irish ancestry as a negative thing. This chapter seems to focus on the case of Typhoid Mary through the lens of Gender History. The chapter points out the social expectations and perceptions of Women at the time. It highlights how women, expected to cook, were looked at as the most dangerous in the spread of typhoid. Male typhoid carriers were given more freedom and received less punishment even if they had killed more people by spreading typhoid. An interesting thought is the when describing the men with typhoid there was no mention of class or race, or creed. When speaking on Mary Mallon, her masculinity, her irishness, and her working class background came up several times. It offers insight into what people at the time not only thought of gender, and class.
heaven01 points out how they treated Mary, “They basically banned her from walking the streets, interacting with people and they tried to stop her from making a living off of cooking because she was too dangerous to be around.” While they enforced this on Mary, They did not enforce it on men with the same condition. Most of the time letting them free to do what they liked without a slap on the wrist or without any punishment at all.