Failing to Love Essay Example for Free

Failing to hunch EssayIn her story Never Marry a Mexi washstand Sandra Cisneros introduces the reader to the complex issues adjoin the racial and internal identity of a Mexican-American woman living in the United States. The story is somewhat a Chicana woman and how she seeks revenge on a fresh lover who has carry offed her by fit the sexual tutor of his teenage son. Cisneros separate life to the protagonist Cle custodycia and paints her as a character in a modern day to demonstrate the pervasive negative impact on Mexican-American women, especially on Chicanas residing within the United States. Clemencia, the protagonist of the story, thinks move, remember when you used to call me your Malinalli? It was a joke, a private plucky between us, because you supposeed like a Cortes with that beard of yours. My dark skin against yoursMy Malinalli, Malinche, my courtesan, you said, and yanked my head back by the plash (192). Clemencia is a painter, but she must support herse lf in other miens too.She sometimes acts as a translator however for Clemencia Spanish is now the native language. In this discussion of her occupation, Clemencia pronounces any way you look at it, what I do to make a living is a form of prostitution (181). She feels as though when she is not painting she merely sells herself to make a living, much like La Malinche had to do in her relationship with Cortes. Clemencia constantly allows herself to fall in love with unavailable men who atomic number 18 ceaselessly married and always white. This pattern results from her mothers constant advice, Never Marry a Mexican. Clemencias mother, a lower- kinsfolk Chicana woman from the United States who married an upper-class Mexican man, felt inevitable discrimination by two her husbands upper-class family and mainstream U.S. society for her dark skin color. Her swear out to this was to bind out, and supposedly up, by divorcing Clemencias father and marrying a white man.It is because of t his example that Clemencia never sees Mexican men as potential lovers. She explains Mexican men, forget it. For a long time the men clear off the tables or chopping meat behind the butcher counter or driving the buss I rode to school every day, those werent men. Not men I considered as potential lovers. Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Chilean, Columbian, Panamanian, Salvadorean, Bolivian, Honduran, Argentine, Dominican, Venezuelan, Guatemalan, Ecuadorean, Nicaraguan, Peruvian, Costa Rican, Paraguayan, Uruguayan, I dont cargon. I never saw them. My mother did this to me(179). Here Clemencia is adopting the racist Anglo discourse by lumping all Latinos into one, unified group. Her discussion of Mexican does not distinguish between class and race to her Mexican means busboys, butchers, and bus drivers.Mexican is no longer the nationality of the people of Mexico, but rather a class of servers who happen to be br induce. Here Cisneros demonstrates how the racism of dominant society in Ame rica is often internalized and serves to fall apart the people of disem originatored groups. Cisneros makes a strong statement against internalized racism by showing how Clemencias rejection of men of her own race and obsession with white men ultimately leaves her lonely. Clemencia comes to the frustrating, yet enlightening realization that the white men in her life have, like her, adopted the mantra never marry a Mexican when she remembers the conversation Drew and she had the last night they spent together.Clemencia recalls in an inner dialogue, how we had agreed. All for the best. Surely I could see that, couldnt I? My own good. A good sport. A young girl like me. Hadnt I understoodresponsibilities. You didnt think? Never marry a Mexican. Never marry a Mexican. No of course. I see. I see (186). Now Clemencia is now lost without a proper choice of lovers. Mexicans are out of bounds because she could never marry a Mexican, but she now realizes that white men are also out of bounds because they too could never marry a Mexican they could never marry her. Cisneros is therefore demonstrating how internalized racism does not serve to differentiate certain ethnic Mexicans from others in the eyes of white society, and instead only serves to isolate such Mexican-Americans from the culture to which they are supposed to feel connected.By having Clemencia reject the roles of wife and mother and instead embrace the socially deviant mistress role, Cisneros demonstrates how women who refuse socially delightful roles often must do so at the expense of other women. In an attempt to maintain agency that she would otherwise be denied as a married Chicana in dominant, patriarchal society, Clemencia embraces the role of the mistress. The mistress, because of her strictly sexual nature, is traditionally regarded as a role that rewards male dominance in heterosexual relationships. through with(predicate) her role as mistress and her rejection of the role of wife or mother, s he attempts to combat the patriarchal system of conquering and makes allowances for flexibility of gender-role expectations.However because the role of the mistress also depends upon there being another woman, the wife, who is betrayed by both her husband and the mistress, the mistress role does not combat the patriarchal system for all women. It does, in fact, reinforce patriarchal oppression of the wife/mother role. Clemencia seems to have little problem acknowledging her betrayal of other women. She frankly tells the reader Ive been accomplice, having caused deliberate pain to other women. Im vindictive and cruel, and Im capable of anything (179). Therefore, in order to escape subscribed gender roles and claim agency in her sexual relationships, Clemencia loses other women. Cisneros seems to be saying that mujeres andariegas, or daring women who reject the roles society expects of them, do not supporter to institutionally change society for all women but rather must betray ot her women in their search for personal freedom. Clemencia attempts to further combat patriarchal gender roles in her sexual relationships the role of el chingn. When describing sex with Drew, she says I leapt inside you and split you like an apple.Opened for the other to look and not give back (185). Here Clemencia not only takes on the mans part by dance inside, she also executes the violent actions attached to the verb chingar. Clemencia imagines that this sexual aggressiveness empowers her over Drew. She says You were ashamed to be so rude(a)But I saw you for what you are, when you opened yourself for me (185). To Clemencia, sexual relations are based on power dynamics, and in order to escape the passive feminine chingada role she must embrace the possessive, dominant, masculine chingn role. Clemencia extends her embodiment of the chingn role into her dealings with the wives, and even a son, of her lovers.More than once she had sex with a lover while his wife was in labor with his child. She confesses it has given me a bit of crazy gratification to be able to kill those women like thatTo know Ive had their husbands when they were anchored in blue hospital rooms, their linchpin yanked inside out(184). Clemencias relationship with Drews son is another example of her fulfilling a sort of vindictive sexual satisfaction. She says of him I sleep with this boy, their son. To make the boy love me the way I love his father. To make him want me the way I love his fatherI can tell from the way he looks at me, I have him in my powerI permit him nibbleBefore I snap by teeth (187). Therefore she seduces him not to satisfy the zealous of her body or hear, but rather to achieve sexual power of the son, which she perceives as giving her confirming power of his parents.Clemencia is ultimately left lonely without a lover, a connection to her culture, or meaningful young-bearing(prenominal) friendships. The reason for this lies in the world view Clemencia has inherited from her society. She perceives the world in black and white, in name of inescapable binaries between which she must choose. She fails to become an acceptable marriage partner to Drew, she fails to escape being hurt by her lovers even as a mistress.Works CitedNever Marry a Mexican. Random House, Inc. and vintage Books1991