The code of conduct thence, build by members of the two different gender namely male and female are given poignant preeminence since they have been inherently cultured to create into women a docile lam like character that places them under some helpless disposition of abuse by their male colleagues. It is this abhorred state of affairs that the writer tries to satirize in the exposition that are eminent in the stories thereof. The writer presents a female character who disabuses the mythology of female gender inferiority and separates with her abusive husband when the marriage life that she had initially craved turns sour since she has the fabric of her social life torn asunder by loneliness after her demise from her family members coupled with her failure at partaking of the happy and peaceful life she sort in matrimony. She thence, fights back in acquisance of what may be her pursuance of happiness against odds of chronic poverty and abject economic devastation that, largely contravenes her former childhood breeding that sow her as a proud and pretty girl and later on as a lovely lady that drew admiration of many so much such that she despised her communal male counterparts as the would be worthy suitors when they came to hazard for her marital consent.
The below thesis whence, anchors on the revolutionary spirits that were born out of challenges that the members of the female gender had faced and the due mannerisms with which a sane and victories battle was launched against the manacles of gender inequality, absence of economic parity, social profiling based on the levels of economic franchisement e.t.c
In line with the above exhaustive introduction the body of this thesis is founded on the conflictions and well contrasted state of life of Ceeofilas Enrqueta alias Hemandez Deleon. Who had the privilege of good breeding as a growing up child and was the delight of men old and young alike as she grew into her twilight days. She was the definition off beauty or even fairer than that word as connoted with the fervent chase of men for her cons4nt in marriage. She thus developed haughty eyes that made her fail to give attention to those with whom she grew up with. This was because she did not think them handsome enough to be her rightful husband. When she met and courted Juan Pedro, she was overly optimistic of a good a settled happy marriage. She then, departs from her father and six brothers to start up a new life with her new won bridegroom in a ramshackle house in Texas town.
Life begins as a promising haven and all things appear under control what would have appeared to her as a dream of happy marriage come true. Albeit, soon after things begin to turn and life starts to offer challenges that are not fathomable to her, regrets too commences to creep in and the marital union begins to stumble under the weight of violence. Hemandez realizes too that the love of her husband Pedro to her is fast diminishing and it is quickly giving way to hate.
It is at this point in time that lost in mental travels that land her at her former past life that she had despised because she had felt it gave to her loneliness in a family enormously dominated by members of the male gender. When trapped in a meditation like moment in life across Hollering Creek stream she, bemoans the former peaceful life with her family members in a passionate search in what has turned into tumultuous and life solitude with an overwhelmingly abusive husband. Yet, to her amazement the husband do not appear guilty conscious since the violent antics in a man are culturalisation in what has been regarded as proper manhood by their society.
Moreover, Cleofilas finds herself caught up in into air tight culturally specified gender roles that are absolutely of constrictive structural natures because of her linguistic isolation. She equally suffers the setbacks of violence in marriage that produces in her depression and suppressions that could easily develop into mental trauma. Cleofilas is too faced with the realities of abject poverty that dissociates her from the social class of her husband who came from a higher caste in the eco-social hierarchy.
In this regard she bethinks overlooked and despised and dejected. She attempts to fight back in order to obtain her lost freedom and blessing of pride and pursuit of happiness. in a revolutionary spirit she tries to weave into the Mexican across the vistas of time and the phenomena of history in their gender relations and she goes further to elucidate their state of misery, their exploited want and whims of intimidations fashioned at them without there being a dint from them of attempting to fight back in order to redefine their rightful place in the human society.
It is against these ills perpetrated against women that form her passionate rallying call for a new down of social order in a male dominated society. She seeks to mount a victorious war against all forms of subjugation of the weaker members of female gender. She thence, reawakes the gigantic power within her, she chooses to despise the ideas of domestic happiness and separates with her husband an endeavor aimed at liberating herself and showcasing the plight of women in her community. She thus wages conflict against many odds of her day and age that ends up taking a back with a rude shock those that have paid tribute to subjugating women and those who draw inspirations from the shrine of domestic violence per se.
In the second story of Hellena Marria Viramontes there is an exposition of the flagrant oppression, suppression and blatant abuse of the weaker members of society namely those of inferior races, class and those who are unable to conform to the already pre set political agenda. Thus their lack of inclusion into the political mosaic of the United States of American society exposes them to a subjugated inferior position wherein they are prevalent to abuse, ridicule and molestations.
The writer creates a fervent between them and the refugees in the American societies and espouses on the wide similarity between the duo, since the former are equally helpless victims of the atrocities orchestrated against them by the aftermath of United States policies and programmes; such as the citizenry of El Salvado. She aggrieves the plight of the oppressed and exploited army reserve laborers and goes further to highlight the hard feelings of immigrants as they are designated as second rate members of the wider American society. In her first book collection of short stories the’ The moth and other Stories’ she seeks to give voice to women who had been historically silenced across epoch of history this she does adequately through the appropriation of the clarity of female gender’s historicity.
She objects to the eminent fact that society exploit women’s’ services yet, in the contrary it fails to recognize the relevant prerequisite dignity that holds their priori essentials as human beings. The society’s failure to cognize the value of the female gender and its blind and arrogance deciphication of all of, the ‘would be’ signs of cognizance of this fact forms the passionate centrality of the authors of giving women a face uplift. When the writer changes the perceived meaning of the word family to give it more relevance in the Chicano communal life she ejects it from a feminist point of thought. She goes further to hoist the preeminence of patriarchy among the Chicanos and mounts too, an immutable challenge to the age long acceptance of women as weaker members of the community and b y practice lesser beings in the American society. Besides her opposition to the uncritical traditional opinion on Chicano family she also disabuses historical context and matrix of silencing women by whims of culturalisation and tradition.
In her corrupted and altered version to the meaning of the word family, she seeks to drive sense not only to the male dominant society but, he also drives sense to the government in its continuance in exerting undue power over women’s’ bodies as they hide beneath rhetoric of purported sacred families.
Lastly, in relevance to the short story of the’ weeping woman’ [La Llalorona], wherein Maria and her husband Ranchero with their two children had a life had an initial beautiful family life that later turned sour when the husband ceased to love her reverted attention to the children alone. The plight of these women is an insinuation of the plight of women highlighted in the aforesaid in the stories. They both suffer subjugations, oppression and frustrations such as wife battering in the family life and the society as a whole. Out of rage she turns her anger against her own children and blindly casts them into the river, but upon her death her spirit hovers and rooms along the bank of the mighty stream looking for her drowning children. since it was all as a result of ill treatment in marriage and sufficing rejection coupled with swelling heat of hate and despiteful antics of abuse because she did not belong to the same caste as the husband and above all the rude gesture of her husband’s expressed desire of likelihood of marrying another wife of his would be social and economic class and princely breeding.
In the nexus of the trio short stories that, all elucidates the plight of the female members of the Mexican American society a problem that envisages their ill-treatment, molestations, wife battering, intimidations just to mention a few right from their childhood to later marital life and the punitive support of the same by its legitimization in oral tradition, folklore stories transmitted to their posterity across generation. In the contrary, when these agents portray the ills permitted by the social fabric of society that frustrates a woman’s search for happiness they do note proceed thereof to propose sane approaches to the healing of a society that is ill under the scourge of economic inequality, one that is still struggling to recover from social profile and one that is have free and half enslaved.
Critically speaking, the stories fail to project gender affirmative actions that are in tandem with an evolutionary civilization. The stories portray a figures of women who are fighting back in attempts to compare and compete with men in stead of seeking to nobly restore the lost social cohesion in a gender balanced communal life. Women are equally showcased as antagonist revolutionaries rather than the much needed progressive and accommodative changes that must come over time in the span of history.
In the attempts to fight against the misogynist cultural codes and attitudes they fail to expose the transient meaning of the word culture is today and not the strictures and traditions upheld by the local forks in the Mexican American set up. In addition the just ended critics the stories captures pride among the women revolutionaries in the stories an attitude that impedes reasoning upon which all wise redress of on gender imbalances and finally that, Maria’s spirit bemoans her lost children is a denotation of aggression rather than reason as a priori treatise in gender hegemonisation inter-alia.
In conclusion, the trio stories presents a feministic struggle against the debris and darts of gender segregation that have found voice and expressions in the Mexican American culture thence legitimized by the populace historicity.
Work Cited
A short essay on the novel, “The Weeping Woman” by Joe Hayes
A short essay on the novel, “"Woman Hollering Creek"” by Sandra Cisneros
A short essay on the novel, “The Cariboo Cafe” by Helena María Viramontes
