Failing to Love Essay

In her story Never Marry a Mexican Sandra Cisneros introduces the reader to the complex issues surrounding the racial and sexual identity of a Mexican-American cleaning lady living in the fall in States. The story is about a Chicana woman and how she seeks r blushge on a sportsmanlike lover who has rejected her by proper the sexual tutor of his teenage son. Cisneros withstand life to the protagonist Clemencia and paints her as a character in a modern day to demonstrate the permeant negative impact on Mexican-American women, especially on Chicanas residing within the United States. Clemencia, the protagonist of the story, thinks draw, remember when you used to call me your Malinalli? It was a joke, a private endorse between us, because you fancyed 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 braid (192). Clemencia is a painter, but she must support herself in other demeanors to o.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 agnise 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 ar everlastingly married and always white. This pattern 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 inescapable discrimination by both her husbands upper-class family and mainstream U.S. society for her dark skin color. Her say to this was to unite out, and supposedly up, by divorcing Clemencias father and marrying a white man.It is because of this example that Clemencia neer sees M exican men as potential lovers. She explains Mexican men, obturate it. For a long time the men clearing 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 care. I never sawing machine 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 take. Here Cisneros demonstrates how the racism of overriding society in America is often internali zed and serves to separate the people of disem personneled 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 nev er 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 character references of wife and mother and instead embrace the socially deviant mistress role, Cisneros demonstrates how women who refuse socially acceptable roles often must do so at the expense of other women. In an attempt to contract agency that she would otherwise be denied as a married Chicana in dominant, time-honored society, Clemencia embraces the role of the mistress. The mistress, because of her strictly sexual nature, is traditionally regarded as a role that reinforces male dominance in heterosexual relationships. Through her role as mistress and her rejection of the role of wife or mother, she attempts to flake 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 aboveboard 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 offer gender roles and claim agency in her sexual relationships, Clemencia hurts other women. Cisneros seems to be saying that mujeres andariegas, or daring women who reject the roles society expects of them, do not service of process to institutionally change society 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 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 leaping inside, she also executes the violent actions attached to the verb chingar. Clemencia imagines that this sexual aggression empowers her over Drew. She says You were ashamed to be so nakedBut 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 rejoice to be able to kill 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 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 let him nibbleBefore I snap by teeth (187). Therefore she seduces him not to satisfy the burning 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 left lonely without a lover, a connection to her culture, or meaningful female 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 impairment 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. plant life CitedNever Marry a Mexican. Random House, Inc. and Vintage Books1991