Portrayal of Gender

Ya know what's rather ridiculous in form of coincidence?...  I have yet to read either of the books that this response was suppose to be about.  I never finished Bean Trees, nor have I even started to read Ethan Frome actually.  I had small glimpse of both but I never had a proper sit-down and read it...  but from what I could tell...  In the both the stories, men were normally portrayed as unfaithful while the women were either mean yet devoted or loving but submissive.  I guess men didn't exactly fetched a opinion in the eyes of the authors.