Ma put the clean dripping tin dish out on a box. She smiled down at her work. "You get your stick, Pa," she said. "Times when they’s food an’ a place to set, then maybe you can use your stick an’ keep your skin whole. But you ain’t a-doin’ your job, either a-thinkin’ or a-workin’. If you was, why, you could use your stick, an’ women folks’d sniffle their nose an’ creep-mouse aroun’. But you jus’ get you a stick now an’ you ain’t lickin’ no woman; you’re a-fightin’, ’cause I got a stick all laid out too."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 26. This is an important moment when we see how Ma Joad’s role has changed completely from a motherly to a leadership one in the family. Here she stands up to Pa’s threat to take a stick to her, by equally threatening him with a stick. Magnificently indominable as a wife, mother and woman, Ma reminds her husband that he has no right to control of the family since he has neither a job nor money. Pa’s loss of human dignity is evident in this chapter. Unable to find work in the new land of California, he is also losing his place as head of the family.