Failing to Love Essay

In her story â€Å"Never Marry a Mexican† Sandra Cisneros introduces the reader to the complex issues surrounding the racial and sexual identity of a Mexican-American woman living in the United States. The story is about a Chicana woman and how she seeks revenge on a white lover who has rejected her by becoming the sexual tutor of his teenage son. Cisneros give life to the protagonist Clemencia and paints her as a character in a modern day to demonstrate the pervasive negative impact on Mexican-American women, especially on Chicanas residing within the United States. Clemencia, the protagonist of the story, thinks â€Å"Drew, remember when you used to call me your Malinalli? It was a joke, a private game between us, because you looked like a Cortes with that beard of yours. My dark skin against yours†¦My 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 ways too. She sometimes acts as a translator; however for Clemencia Spanish is now the â€Å"native† language. In this discussion of her occupation, Clemencia pronounces â€Å"any 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 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 are always married and always white. This pattern results from her mother’s constant advice, â€Å"Never Marry a Mexican†. Clemencia’s mother, a lower-class Chicana woman from the United States who married an upper-class Mexican man, felt inescapable discrimination by both her husband’s upper-class family and mainstream U.S. society for her dark skin color. Her answer to this was to marry out, and supposedly up, by divorcing Clemencia’s father and marrying a white man. It is because of this example that Clemencia never sees Mexican men as potential lovers. She explains: â€Å"Mexican men, forget 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 weren’t 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 don’t 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 â€Å"Mexican† does not distinguish between class and race; to her â€Å"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 brown. Here Cisneros demonstrates how the racism of dominant society 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 Clemencia’s 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 â€Å"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 â€Å"we had agreed. All for the best. Surely I could see that, couldn’t I? My own good. A good sport. A young girl like me. Hadn’t I understood†¦responsibilities. You didn’t 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 never 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 roles 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 claim agency 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 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 combat the patriarchal system of oppression 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 candidly tells the reader â€Å"I’ve been accomplice, having caused deliberate pain to other women. I’m vindictive and cruel, and I’m capable of anything† (179). Therefore, in order to escape subscribed gender roles and claim agency in her sexual relationships, Clemencia hurts other women. Cisneros seems to be saying that â€Å"mujeres andariegas†, or daring women who reject the roles society expects of them, do not help to institutionally change society for all women but rather must betray other women in their search for personal freedom. Clemencia attempts to further com bat patriarchal gender roles in her sexual relationships the role of el chingà ³n. When describing sex with Drew, she says â€Å"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 man’s part by â€Å"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 â€Å"You were ashamed to be so naked†¦But 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 chingà ³n role. Clemencia extends her embodiment of the chingà ³n 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 â€Å"it has given me a bit of crazy joy to be able to kill those women like that†¦To know I’ve had their husbands when they were anchored in blue hospital rooms, their guts yanked inside out†(184). Clemencia’s relationship with Drew’s son is another example of her fulfilling a sort of â€Å"vindictive sexual satisfaction†. She says of him â€Å"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 father†¦I can tell from the way he looks at me, I have him in my power†¦I let him nibble†¦Before I snap by teeth† (187). Therefore she seduces him not to satisfy 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 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 terms 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. Works Cited Never Marry a Mexican. Random House, Inc. and Vintage Books1991