Fiddler on the Roof

Tevye is the protagonist and the patriarch of the main family. He is a dairy farmer who believes in Jewish cultural traditions and familial/communal gender roles. As the father of the family, Tevye’s role, as he and the other fathers define it, is to “scramble for a living, feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers,” and he “has the right as master of the house to have the final word at home” (1). Tevye is poor and dreams about having money so that his family can live in luxury. But his priority in choosing matches for his daughters is education. He hesitates to accept Lazar Wolf’s offer to marry Tzeitel because Lazar is not a scholar, although he is rich. But while Tevye hopes for his daughters to marry a certain kind of man, he respects their wishes and free will. When Tzeitel insists that she will have a miserable life if married to Lazar Wolf, Tevye immediately agrees not to force her to marry him. As the new generation focuses on love instead of the transaction-based marriages of his generation, Tevye sees his own marriage through a new light and asks his wife if she loves him.