Rosie

Rosie is a doctor and her family’s breadwinner, which puts her at odds with established gender roles. Despite her feminist views, her initial reaction to Claude’s desire to wear a dress reflects very conventional ideas about gender: not able to categorize Claude as anything other than a boy, she insists he must wear boy’s clothes to school. However, Rosie demonstrates great flexibility in allowing her way of seeing gender to be transformed. As a devoted mother, she is motivated by ensuring Claude/Poppy’s happiness. She agonizes over how to do this throughout the novel, wondering what decision to make for a child whose path is particularly unconventional and uncertain. Only after her transformative trip to Thailand does she resolve this struggle, realizing that accepting this uncertainty and supporting Poppy in facing the community is the best thing to do.

By contrast to Penn, Rosie...