Gender identities and roles are a crucial part on a women’s life in 17th century in Spain and what will be later become America. When looking the histories on these century, women transgression toward society norms shaped by Spain influence of a “ideal” women behavior should be like. Two fitting examples of how women transgress in society at the time is Catalina de Erauso and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. These two women had to change many aspects in their life to accomplish an internal freedom, which at the time society didn’t approve as appropriate for an ordinary woman. Some of the crucial aspects affected by this choice are gender and how they are predive at the time, transgression towards social rules, identity and how it had to be changed to be accepted and personal freedom…
Introduction: It is not uncommon to read in a history text book during anytime and find a note, a sentence, and a paragraph, of how somewhere women were not equal to men. This continues even today as in some areas women are still treated with inferiority, but many countries also have changed already, such as Cuba. In the years of 1959 to 1990, women and even some men, prompted for gender equality, for women to be able to do the things men could do without being judged. This time period marks a change in Cuban society, from an ignorant society of their world before 1959 into a more enlightened place, through the efforts of many people against what others were telling them was wrong, what society had told was wrong, but what they knew was truly…
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, The Answer/La respuesta, ed. & trans. Electa Arenal & Amanda Powell (New York: Feminist Press, City University of New York, 1994) [LAm 861.39/J870.187] ——, Obras completas, ed. Alfonso Méndez Plancarte & Alberto G. Salceda, 4 vols (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1951–57) [Short Loan CRes. 861.39,J870/125 ] The complete works are available in downloadable form at the Dartmouth Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Project webpage at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sorjuana/Access.html Arenal, Electa, ‘The convent as catalyst for autonomy: Two Hispanic nuns of the seventeenth century’, in Women in Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols, ed. Beth Miller (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 147–83 [on www.barnard.columbia.edu/english/ reinventingliteraryhistory/women/juana/arenal.htm —access through Google] Franco, Jean, ‘Sor Juana explores space’, in her Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (New York: Columbia UP, 1989), 23–54 [ 396.58/F1; Short Loan CRes. 396.58/F1] Jed, Stephanie. ‘Gender, rationality and the marketing of knowledge’, in Women, Race and Writing in the Early Modern Period, ed. Margo Hendricks & Patricia Parker. London: Routledge, 1994), 195–208 [396.58/H5]. Myers, Kathleen, ‘Sor Juana’s Respuesta: Rewriting the Vitae’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 14 (1990), 459–71 [Periodicals, Orange, Floor 2] Paz, Octavio, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, o las trampas de la fe (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1981); 2nd edn (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica; 1994) [LAm 868.6,P298/158]; English trans. Sor Juana; or, The Traps of Faith, trans. Margaret Sayers Peden (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1988) [Short Loan CRes. 868.6,P298/157]; summarized in his ‘Homenaje a Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz en su Tercer Centenario (1651–1695)’, Sur, 206 (Diciembre 1951), 29–40, available on…
In his historical novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz illuminates the dysfunctionality of the hyper-sexualized culture of the Dominican Republic through the juxtaposition of the fukú, or curse, the fictional legacy of the deLeon family, and the historical oppressive regime of Rafael Trujillo. As the hostile dictator of the Dominican Republic for 31 years, Trujillo’s embodiment of a masculinity characterized by terror, abuse, and the objectification of women, develops into the image of a typical Dominican male. Manifesting the society’s conventional perception of the interchangeability of aggressive masculinity and authoritative power, Diaz asserts that although not entirely independent from his false masculinity, Trujillo’s…
During Trujillo’s dictatorship years he would take away women’s rights in such a harsh way in the Dominican Republic. Initially, Alvarez states In The Time of the Butterflies (2010)“Everyone knows his real job is rounding up pretty girls for El Jefe to try out,” (p.94) There’s a guy that people call the secretary of state in the Dominican Republic but most people actually know that his job is for Trujillo to find girls that he can take advantage of. Trujillo abuses his power by taking advantage of girls and thus changing their futures forever, violating women’s rights. Furthermore,…
Feminist readers see Sor Juana as an example to proudly advertise and develop her talent in a culture that limits women’s opportunities. In Sor Juana’s hypocritical society, her voice objects to the unfairness by defending herself and other women using a direct first person declaration. Her poem “Hombres Nescios” (foolish men) is a good example of the hypocrisy. In the beginning Sor Juana writes, “Misguided men, who will chastise a woman when no blame is due, oblivious that it is you who prompted what you criticize” (Penden 149). This illustrates the double standard and how men blame the women for the faults that they themselves caused. Also, Sor Juana addresses the issue of prostitution, “ Whose is the greater guilt therein when either’s conduct may dismay: she who sins and takes the pay, or he who pays her for the sin” (Penden 151). Sor Juana wants her readers to reconsider the existing beliefs about the guilt and shame in society. She is not overlooking prostitution; she is making it obvious that she wants men and women to be judged equivalently. However, till this day women will most likely never be equal to men. Sor Juana faced discrimination simply because she is a…
of all races were thought of as inferior and weak compared to males. They were labeled maids,…
When analyzing Gloria Anzaldua’s writing “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” it is important to look at her background. She comes from a very diverse background; her parents were immigrants, she was born in south Texas, and she identifies herself as a Chicana feminist. The different discourse communities seen through her writing is the struggle she has between the different languages she has to adapt to around different people in her life. Writing from the borderlands between American, Mexican, Spanish, Indian, Chicano, and Mestiza culture, Anzaldua creates a representation of the wide range of forces within herself and the culture from which comes.…
In certain societies in today’s modern world, it is seen as something acceptable to dehumanize women to merely an object. To diminish the existence of women just so that a man can be accepted is, in my eyes, something utterly absurd and should not even be an idea in any culture. Throughout The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, the reader distinguishes that in the Dominican Republican communities, is it known that in order to be accepted by society, men have to be able to be “good with the girls”. Oscar Wao, one of the characters, does experience this. The readers can see that this act dehumanizes women in that society reducing their existence by being objectified, pressures the girls in that society to look/act a certain way,…
Patriarchic society instills this self-hatred into Chicanas by embedding their worthlessness into the foundation of society itself. “Chicanas’ negative perceptions of ourselves as sexual persons and our consequential betrayal of each other find their roots in a four-hundred-year-long Mexican history and mythology” (39). This self-hatred is institutionalized by the creation of a myth that justifies the…
Life in the early 1800’s was difficult. One of the hardest group of workers were the colonial women. Some of the interesting and needed to know parts of the colonial women were the background of their lives, the social pressure that they were under and how the group affected America; These are all very important elements of the period.…
Society today is besieged by many stereotypes. In Trinidad and Tobago, gender stereotyping is one of the many social barriers that add to the social pressures within our society. Trinidad and Tobago, like the rest of the world, has experienced rapid social and economic changes, yet there still lays an “old-fashioned” and conventional mentality towards traditional gender roles. Many societies perceive that cultural ideologies about gender, influence social norms for appropriate and acceptable bodies. “The greatest gender inequalities are found in North Africa and Western Asia. Countries in East Asia and the Pacific have come close to achieving gender parity in access to education, while in Latin America and the Caribbean there appears to be a slight bias against boys.” Although more women than men have pursued higher education in some countries, this has not necessarily lead to better labour market outcomes for women. It can be recognized that men dominate commercial roles and women subservient subordinate roles. Due to society’s sex-based discriminatory practices, this results in the stereotyping that women are less interested or capable of assuming roles that men dominate.…
There are different countries and cultures in the world. Sometimes when Americans view other cultures’ values the actual truth becomes distorted. In her article “Americanization is tough on the Macho,” Rose Del Castillo Guilbault examines the concept of macho from both the Hispanics and Americans perspective. The Hispanic view of macho embodies a man described by Guilbault as manly, responsible, hardworking, a patriarch and a person who expresses strength through silence. She describes her father as a man who “handled most menial task with pride.” In a patriarchal society such as Mexico, the man is regarded as the nucleus of the family. The man represents strength, and he is in charge of the welfare of the family. The hardworking, responsible ‘macho’ man, however, assumes a new meaning when one looks at it from the American point of view. A macho figure as depicted in American movies portrays a man who brutishly subdues people and acts with recklessness and lawlessness .A macho man in the America will, therefore, be all that the Mexican macho is not. In my opinion, Gilbert’s father epitomizes a larger society of people considered to be minorities, with strong ties to their heritage. These people add to the diversity of American culture. They also bring some positive qualities and contributions to the American society, even though these qualities are easily overlooked.…
A woman’s culture has the largest affect on defining their roles, and often times may lead to discrimination and unfair treatment. In the article, “Patriarchy and Domination,” by Gerda Lerner,…
Recent studies have shown that indigenous communities in the Cordillera, including the Ifugao people, are mainly egalitarian and thus women have a ‘relatively high status’ in the community as compared to other countries. Casambre noted that there is “little evidence of systemic oppression of (Cordillera) women either by socialization or through social institutions associated with agriculture.” This notion dismisses the feminist argument that all women in the Philippines are oppressed. Additionally, Atkinson and Errington explain that this ‘high status’ for women is expressed in “enjoying economic opportunities, suffering few legal restrictions or damning stereotypes, and participating in cultures where sexes are construed in terms of complementarity and balance rather than different worth in comparison to men.” This…