At this point in “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros, the Mexican woman Cléofilas is married to Juan Pedro, an abusive Mexican-American man living in Texas. She is pregnant with their second child, and wants to go to the doctor for a checkup, or at least that's what she tells him. When she arrives at the doctor's office she begs for his help in escaping back home to Mexico, giving us the climax of her story.
This passage, like others in this story, is written in an interesting half-narration-half-dialogue that serves to explain a conversation while staying completely outside of it with a limited omnicient voice. Cisneros manages to avoid ever resorting to quotation marks in the whole piece, instead approaching all dialogue this way. This way of keeping the reader outside of the action gives us the impression of separation, as though we're watching from the outside (like the telenovelas Cleofilas loves to watch). The reader can also infer a sense of separation that Cléofilas has in her own life. This marriage is completely unlike how she imagined it would be, and even though she is living with Mexican-Americans she is an outsider from a very different culture.
Even as the style keeps us separate, it is still very easy to see how this conversation is happening. Cléofilas is at this point helpless in her life, pushed around and abused in this unromantic marriage. The detached way that, “Please don't any more. Please don't.” is presented lends a heartbreaking sort of irony to the passage, as it's easy to imagine Juan Pedro shouting his outrage at the thought of asking for money. Cléofilas can only plead with him, knowing that her only hope of escape is speaking to this doctor. The passage “She won't ask for anything else. She has to. Why is she so anxious? Because.” is also key, because it's our clue that she has already decided to leave him. We could also make the leap that she doesn't just want to write to her father for money, she also wants to write to him to tell him that she needs help. At any rate, this passage has interesting hints of foreshadow.
However, along with that feeling of helplessness is a hint of exasperation. She knows what to expect from her husband, and she's tired of it. The phrasing of the passage, “And after the rent and the food and the electricity and the gas and the water and the who-knows-what,” gives the impression that she disapproves of the way Juan Pedro handles money. Who-knows-what could be referring to his drinking at the ice-house, or it could possibly be referring to her suspicion that he's been having an affair.
Cléofilas is a woman who has been let down by the world, her conflict being with the socitey she lives in. She had high hopes for her new life in America with her husband, imagining a romantic life like in a telenovela. After some time, however, she realizes that her new life came with all of the heartbreak but none of the passion, and she knows she can't live that way any longer. Going home she has a realization: she can start again, and she can do it for herself. She can be happy, because she can be her own woman.
DISCUSSION QUESTION: Is Cléofilas' returning home a story of freedom, or one where she simply changes hands from one man to another?
No comments:
Post a Comment