Part 1 of Song of the Lark seems to play heavily into the gender roles of males and females during this time, especially in developing the household that Thea grows up in. It i obvious during that time that women were supposed to be married off at an incredibly young age and the older they got the more it was assumed that something was wrong with them. Situations and expectations similar to this book, which was set in the early 1900s, are still prevalent in the South. I myself have experienced the pressure of "finding my future husband." This just goes to show that in old fashioned traditional settings, marriage and the expectations of the the male and female genders are paid a lot of attention. It goes to show that people can get very caught up in their idea of what needs to happen and when it needs to happen instead of simply allowing the person to develop and prosper at their own speed. Although Thea was given that freedom to a certain extent, the social pressures were still evident and when she strayed away from those she was dismissed in a way.