English 1B
Knapp
March 07, 2011
Feminist Critisim
“Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.” Mary Wollstonecraft was a famous writer who was passionate about her rights around the late 1700’s. Along with many more women, the fight for having the same benefits continues now in some countries. Focusing in to the 1960’s was almost the start of officially making a movement that didn’t start till the 1970’s eighties-ish. Dagoberto Gilbbs wrote his novel The Flowers which is set in Los Angeles during the feminist movement in an area where there is a lot of Mexican cultures and customs. There are three main women characters in the novel The Flowers, Silvia Sonny’s mom, Cindy who lives in the Flowers apartments building and also Nica. All of these women play a role of stereo and control of a man.Silvia is described as a “pretty little Mexican gal” (51). Sylvia was everyone’s and no one’s man type of woman who spent her time with many men during the night and stole their money. There is one stereotype of a Mexican woman who steals and gets with any guy. Where we find out the she steals is when a man came knocking on the door while she wasn’t home and violently threatens to hurt her if she didn’t open and poor Sonny has no idea who that man was. The stranger literally shouts, “You bitch, open the fucking door right now, you goddamn thief, you slut, you bitch, open this door, Silvia, right now, or I’ll fucking bust it in” (6). The key words from this passage are thief, slut, and bitch which are the main words that directly degrade a woman.
After the act of violence, that she doesn’t know happened, she decides to settle with a man named Cloyd Longpre who has a lot of money, owns his own apartment building The Flowers, and is racist against blacks and stereotypical about Mexican woman. One of the biggest misconceptions of Mexican women is that they love cooking and cleaning, which being a Mexican American woman is not exactly the case. Silvia decides after being an out and going mother to be an at home mom who cooks and cleans for her husband. Sonny realizes that the image of an at home mom that Silvia tries to portrays is only a fake version of herself. Sonny says, “My mom was dressed too pretty to take serious, shampoo in her hair and body lotion smell, and she was trying too hard to sound happy. Nobody’d believe her except her” (17). Even reading a little more after that passage Sonny explains how typical house mom’s dress and the differences it has towards Silvia who tries to impress her husband. He also explains how Silvia doesn’t usually cook or even knows how to do many kinds of dishes.
Later on in the novel Silvia gets tired of being at home and wants to get out for once. Women are not meant to just be at home and be assigned chores and cooking. So Silvia decides to go out and when Cloyd arrives home he doesn’t find her there and bursts into anger. He says, “Goddamn it… Where is she?” (127). He is drunk and wants her home at that instant. Sonny explains how his mom snuck in by the back door and that’s where she always enters through anyways which shows the lack of respect of a married woman to go through her own families front door. It also shows how her freedom is banned and is gotten in trouble for stepping out for a little while. Silvia is a great example of a woman with no powers and is controlled by a male or has been controls by men.
Cindy is another character filled with stereotypes. She is literally a desperate housewife. She is very bored and hates her husband. Cindy tries her hardest to seduce Sonny and plays the main ‘bad girl’ of the novel. While Nica is the ‘good girl’ who works hard to take care of her brother and is in charge of house hold chores. There is a big difference in Sonny’s level of respect for each character. Sonny is attracted to Cindy in a sexual way and is seen as just a mere object or a second base if all fails with other girls. There is a very intense scene where they almost have sexual intercourse and his reaction was, “As bad as I felt, meaning good, what she said made me feel other bad. I wanted to yell at her saying it, and I wanted to do it again now… I wanted to steal something of hers” (87). Sonny uses his attraction to take opportunities to get what he want which is stealing and having her for his pleasure.
On the other hand, Sonny has a different want from Nica. His want is also getting in her pants but Nica’s personality and intensions is way more different than Cindy’s. Nica’s parents didn’t allow her to go to school or anywhere for that matter. She is like a princess locked up in her home for life to take care of her baby brother and doing chores. She did appreciate what she had and the way she dressed says a lot about her just as Cindy’s way of dressing says a lot about her as well. Sonny describes, “It made me happy she thought my name was good, and I probably would’ve smiles right at her, but I wasn’t able to look up, so I smiles at her dress. It looked soft like cotton, the color of beach shells, and it was wrinkled like the crinkly paper they draped from ceilings … Nobody wore a dress like that. It made her seem like a movie Indian” (47). The way she dressed and her personality made Sonny look at her in a distinct way. While Sonny describes Cindy, on the sexual scene, “She got up, putting her little pieces of bikini back together” (87). On most of the scenes Cindy is half naked while Nica is always dolled up. Even though Sonny at a point gets an impulse to steal from Nica he holds back from that because he knows that being like that to her wasn’t what he wanted to appear to her. But Sonny does try to imagine touching and kissing Nica despite the differences and how he sort of manipulates her to break a couple of rules by sneaking over to her apartment at night.
These three main women of the novel show the degrading way men treat them. Silvia, the house wife who tries to be someone she isn’t. Cindy, the desperate house wife how tries to get into Sonny’s pants and is the ‘bad’ girl, and Nica who is trapped in her own home and is the ‘good’ girl that may break a couple rules.
