Failing to Love Essay

In her story neer Marry a Mexican Sandra Cisneros introduces the reader to the complex issues surrounding the racial and internal identity of a Mexican-the Statesn woman living in the unite States. The story is ab come out of the closet a Chicana woman and how she seeks revenge on a discolour write outr who has despiseed her by becoming the land upual manager of his teenage tidings. Cisneros shed life to the protagonist Clemencia and offendts her as a event in a modern day to demonstrate the pervasive ban impact on Mexican-American women, especially on Chicanas residing within the United States. Clemencia, the protagonist of the story, thinks Drew, remember when you used to call me your Malinalli? It was a joke, a private venture amidst us, because you looked like a Cortes with that beard of yours. My dark skin against yoursMy Malinalli, Malinche, my courtesan, you said, and yanked my flip back by the braid (192). Clemencia is a painter, but she must oppose herself in other ways too.She sometimes acts as a adapter however for Clemencia Spanish is now the native language. In this discussion of her occupation, Clemencia pronounces either 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 non 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 are always married and always white. This rule results from her mothers constant advice, never Marry a Mexican. Clemencias mother, a lower-class Chicana woman from the United States who married an upper class Mexican man, felt ines up to(p) discrimination by both her conserves upper-class family and mainstream U.S. society for her dark skin color. Her answer to this was to get married out, and supposedly up, by divorcing Clemencias founder and tieing a white man.It is because of this display case that Clemencia never sees Mexican men as potential lovers. She explains Mexican men, barricade it. For a long time the men clearing off the tables or chopping meat behind the butcher counter or driving the kiss 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 care. 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 glide by to be brown. Here Cisneros demonstrates how the racial discrimination of dominant societ y in America is often internalized and serves to separate the people of disempowered groups. Cisneros makes a strong statement against internalized racism by showing how Clemencias rejection of men of her own race and arrested development 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 worn-out(a) 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 miss 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 kosher choice of lovers. Mexicans are out of bounds because she could never marry a Mexican, but she now realizes that white men ar e also out of bounds because they too could never marry a Mexican they could never marry her. Cisneros is at that placefore demonstrating how internalized racism does not serve to differentiate legitimate 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 utilizations of wife and mother and instead embrace the socially deviant schoolmistress berth, Cisneros demonstrates how women who refuse socially acceptable roles often must do so at the expense of other women. In an attempt to claim result 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 intimate nature, is traditionally regarded as a role that strengthens male dominance in heterosexual relationships. Through her role as mistress and her rejecti on of the role of wife or mother, she attempts to combat the patriarchal organisation of oppression and makes allowances for flexibility of sexual activity-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 candidly 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 part in her sexual relationships, Clemencia hurts other women. Cisneros seems to be saying that mujeres andariegas, or brave women who reject the roles society expects of them, do not help to institutionally tack soci ety for all women but rather must betray other 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 privileged 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 leaping 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 naked further I saw you for what you are, when you opened yourself for me (185). To Clemencia, sexual relations are base on power dynamics, and in order to escape the passive womanish 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 h ad sex with a lover while his wife was in labor with his child. She confesses it has given(p) me a bit of crazy joy to be able to drink down those women like thatTo know Ive had their husbands when they were anchored in blue hospital rooms, their guts yanked inside out(184). Clemencias relationship with Drews son is another example of her fulfilling a sort of vindictive sexual propitiation. 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 let him nibblein the beginning I snap by teeth (187). Therefore she seduces him not to punish the yearning of her body or hear, but rather to achieve sexual power of the son, which she perceives as giving her indirect power of his parents.Clemencia is ultimately odd lonely without a lover, a connection to her culture, or meaningful female friendships. The reason for this lies in the w orld view Clemencia has inherited from her society. She perceives the world in black and white, in terms of inescapable binaries between which she must choose. She fails to give way 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