For the short story "Man and Wife" by Katie Chase from The Best American Short Stories (2008), I ask that you take one of the identity markers, make a claim about it (a thesis statement), and apply this thread through two stories. You are not comparing and contrasting, but just running the thread through the story and select characters. Your claim can be one where you use ideology or a term to help you better understand how identity is being represented. Mix in some terms with identity to help you along.

Let's examine identity markers in Katie Chase's short story "Man and Wife." At first, the society seems to be our own until we find out about the arranged marriages of young girls. In this society, gender is an important identity marker. Parents arrange for girls to be married off to men in business agreements. This is standard and expected of them:

Now it was real: my future was just the same as any other girl's.

Before she goes to live with Mr. Middleton, Mary Ellen's mother teaches her how to cook, sew, and complete other duties expected of a wife. Gender roles are extremely prevalent and define what the characters do with their lives. It is rare for women to be included in business:

Mr. Middleton has made me apprentice to his business, which he says one day when he is dead, I will take over. Even if—and the decision to have children is entirely up to me, he says—one day we have a son. This is highly unusual and very progressive, Dad has told me . . . My mother admitted, over afternoon tea, that she wishes Dad had done something similar for her.

Age is also an important identity marker. The girls are married off at a young age to men that are established in their careers. There is a clear distinction between the men they will be married to and the boys their age:

Unlike Stacie and me, Cassandra had always liked boys—but husbands were not like boys.

Mary Ellen tells us she is the first of her friends to be married, and she and Stacie take note of how rare it is for someone Mary Ellen's age to be in this situation:

I assumed, as did Stacie, that there'd be a long period of engagement. In the fall we were to start the fifth grade, and it was rare for a girl still in elementary to be taken.

The narrator starts the story telling us she was nine-and-a-half when this all took place and now writes from down her account eight years later. Almost eighteen, she is an established wife with a place in her husband's company. We see how the relationship between age and marriage is very different in this society than in our own.
Physical appearances and wealth are other aspects of identity examined in the story:

They say men first look for strength in a wife. Next they look for beauty, and even with braces and glasses yet to come, I was a homely little girl. It's last that men look for brains. You may notice that I skipped over wealth. While rumors of sex spread freely at school, it wasn't clear to me then just how money fit in. It was discussed only in negotiations, when lawyers were present and we were not. It was best that way for our parents, who tried to keep such things separate.

Mary Ellen frequently refers to Mr. Middleton's mustache, and in her mind it is almost an identifier for him. She hints at business and monetary arrangements—not fully understanding them until she is older and has been married for eight years.