The Power Shift In Traditional Gender Roles Is Immediately

In analyzing portrayals of women, it is appropriate to begin with the character of Margarita. For, within the text, she embodies the traditionally masculine traits of bravery, resilience, and violence as a means of liberating herself from an existence of abuse and victimhood. Even more, the woman plays upon stereotypes of femininity in order to mask her true nature. The reader witnesses this clever deception in a scene where the character endures a “wholesome thrashing” from her huge, violent, and grizzly bear-like husband, Guerra (81). Although Margarita “[submits] to the infliction with great apparent humility,” her husband is found “stone-dead” the next morning (81). Here, diction such as “submits” and “humility” relate to the traits of weakness, subservience and inferiority that are so commonly expected of women, especially in their relationships with men. Yet, when one

In Spain and the Spanish colonies in South America in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, gender roles were distinct and the opportunity gap was enormous. Catalina de Erauso compares the two roles through her memoir, “Lieutenant Nun,” where she recounts her life as a transvestite in both the new and old world. Through having experienced the structured life of a woman as well as the freedom involved in being a man, de Erauso formed an identity for herself that crossed the boundaries of both genders. Catalina de Erauso’s life demonstrates the gap in freedom and opportunity for women, as compared to men, in the areas of culture, politics and economy, and religion.

The mythical rewrite is necessary to the demands of rewriting ideological and cultural norms that manage the theoretical framework. In Chicana/o culture three female shapes, La Malinche, La Llorona, and La Virgen de Gudalupe, separate the cultural borders of female behavior. Gloria Anzaldua proclaims in the Borderlands/La Frontera,

Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue is divided into five sections and an epilogue. The first three parts of the text present Mary/ María’s, the narrator, recollection of the time when she was nineteen and met José Luis, a refuge from El Salvador, for the first time. The forth and fifth parts, chronologically, go back to her tragic experience when she was seven years old and then her trip to El Salvador with her son, the fruit of her romance with José Luis, twenty years after she met José Luis. And finally the epilogue consists a letter from José Luis to Mary/ María after her trip to El Salvador. The essay traces the development of Mother Tongue’s principal protagonists, María/ Mary. With a close reading of the text, I argue how the forth

Thesis statement: Esperanza has a variety of female role models in her life. Many are trapped in abusive relationships, waiting for others to change their lives. Some are actively trying to change things on their own. Through these women and Esperanza’s reactions to them, Cisneros’ shows not only the hardships women face, but also explores their power to overcome them.

In “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” Cofer shows the reader that Latin women are misrepresented in society and in the media, using the rhetorical appeals ethos, logos and pathos as well as allusions to popular culture and personal experience.

“Beautiful and Cruel” marks the beginning of Esperanza’s “own quiet war” against machismo (Hispanic culture powered by men). She refuses to neither tame herself nor wait for a husband, and this rebellion is reflected in her leaving the “table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate (Cisneros 89).” Cisneros gives Esperanza a self-empowered voice and a desire for personal possessions, thing that she can call her own: Esperanza’s “power is her own (Cisneros 89).” Cisneros discusses two important themes: maintaining one’s own power and challenging the cultural and social expectations one is supposed to fulfill. Esperanza’s mission to create her own identity is manifest by her decision to not “lay (her) neck on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain (Cisneros 88).” Cisneros’ rough language and violent images of self-bondage reveal the contempt with which Esperanza views many of her peers whose only goal is to become a wife. To learn how to guard her power

In “Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Transvestite in the New World” by Catalina de Erauso, a female-born transvestite conquers the Spanish World on her journey to disguise herself as a man and inflicts violence both on and off the battlefield. Catalina discovers her hidden role in society as she compares herself to her brothers advantage in life, as they are granted money and freedom in living their own lives. Erauso decides to take action of this act of inequality by forming a rebellion, as she pledges to threaten the social order.The gender roles allotted to both men and women in the Spanish world represent the significance of societal expectations in order to identify the importance of gender in determining one’s position in the social order in the Spanish World.

“The Myth of the Latin Women” was writing by Judith Ortiz Cofer, a women born in Puerto Rico. Ortiz is a person who seems really Passionate about this specific subject. “The Myth of the Latin Women” points out the many stereotypes Latin women go through in their day to day lives. The things that upsets Ortiz is that there are so many people who are not a Latin background that don’t realize the importance of this issue. The main purpose of “The Myth of the Latin Women” is to get people to understand that their words will hurt someone and Ortiz convey this throughout the essay with the use of logos, ethos and pathos.

Catalina de Erauso’s memoir, Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World, depicts gender relations in the early 17th century Spain. Erauso, through her detailed narrative of personal encounters with transvestism, reveals significant implications of the roles and expectations of the gender binary during this era. Her memoir evidently portrays gender binaries in dress, emotion, and interaction within society as she describes aspects of her journey from the perspective of both a woman and man. The male gender exhibits idealized masculine qualities, such as being violent and spontaneous, and the female gender exhibits idealized feminine qualities, such as emotional suppression and tranquility. Erauso expresses the distinct

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the reader gets a sense of what the expectations are of Dominican men and women. Junot Díaz uses Oscar in contrast to the other male characters to present the expectations of the Dominican male. On the other hand, Díaz presents the women in the text, especially Belicia, La Inca, Lola, and Jenni, as strong characters in their own rights, but the male characters, with the exception of Oscar, have a desire to display their masculinity to maintain power over these women. It would be unfair to say that the women bring the abuse unto themselves, but rather it is their culture that makes the abuse acceptable and almost to a certain extent—expected.

Sor Juana again demonstrates her superior knowledge and capabilities in employing complex Latin language into her argument. As suggested by Stephanie Kirk, “Latin wielded a symbolic power throughout the early modern period” (Kirk 83). Therefore, Sor Juana’s use of Latin language when speaking directly to the patriarchy is ironic as she flaunts her immense knowledge to those who originally restricted her from pursuing education. Ultimately, Sor Juana’s “To the Gentleman in Peru” is a poem filled with critical language and addresses issues of gender roles and the limitations of “woman” in Colonial Mexico.

The relationship between the gender roles reflected in telenovelas and the the role of women in Latin American countries is a matter of parallelism. This is because as Judith Butler, the author of the book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, emphasized that it is “impossible to separate out ‘gender’ from the political and cultural intersections in which it is invariably produced and maintained”. Gender is undeniably socially constructed, and is a product of the values deemed important by that society being constantly reenacted and reinforced. In that sense, telenovelas are also another medium through which beliefs in gender can be relayed to the audience, forming what is called the “imaginable domain of gender” as they either perpetuate or go against ideal hegemony (Beard 2003).

Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Never Marry a Mexican” deals heavily with the concept of myth in literature, more specifically the myth La Malinche, which focuses on women, and how their lives are spun in the shadows on men (Fitts). Myths help power some of the beliefs of entire cultures or civilizations. She gives the reader the mind of a Mexican-American woman who seems traitorous to her friends, family and people she is close to. This causes destruction in her path in the form of love, power, heartbreak, hatred, and an intent to do harm to another, which are themes of myth in literature. The unreliable narrator of this story was created in this story with the purpose to show her confusion and what coming from two completely different

Lope de Vega’s play touches upon several key components and ideas that were brought up in many of the other stories read throughout the semester. This included the role of gender and how men and women are viewed differently in the Spaniard town of Fuenteovejuna. Another topic included the importance of family, love, and relationships and their connection on loyalty, trust, and personal beliefs. The last major influence found in other literature and in Fuenteovejuna, were the political and religious references made throughout the play. Even though Lope de Vega didn’t make these views obvious, the reader could still pick up on their connotation and the references made towards these specific ideas. With all of this in mind, each of these