Woman Hollering Creek – Waiting for Freedom
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Waiting for Freedom
In the story “Woman Hollering Creek” Sandra Cisneros discusses the issues of living life as a married woman through a character named Cleofilas; a character who is married to a man who abuses her physically and mentally .Cisneros reveals the way the culture puts a difference between a male and a female, men above women. Cisneros has been famous about writing stories about the latino culture and how women are treated; she explain what they go through as a child, teen and when they are married; always dominated by men because of how the culture has been adapted. “Woman Hollering Creek” is one of the best examples. A character who grows up without a mother and who has no one to guid and give her advise about life.
In an audio Interview, done by Don Swain, Cisneros explains how she got the title of the story.” The Creek” she says “is a real place” she explains how she wanted the title to be in Spanish but she wasnt allowed to; the reason, she explained, was because she was a Mexican woman. “The creek called La Gretna is a reminiscent of popular folktale about La Lorona, a nameless tragic woman drowned herself and her children”(Mullen 1).Cisneros creates the character from a background which explains why she doesnt know what the reality of life is; she comes from a family of a six brothers and a dad and without a mom, a male dominated family. Jeff Thomas, from the article” What is Called Heaven” says: “The union of gender, and gender based ideologies, is essential to the strong, feminine characters of the later stories of Woman Hollering Creek.”(l) What Thomas means is that Cisnores focuses more on gender problems, discriminations and the conflicts in this story rather than love story and the lifestyle. Although Cleofilas finds a way to learn her womanly attributes, through television series .she imagines her ideal life through television series which she watches religiously. Cisneros created a great example. In the third world countries, communication outside of a city or country is very hard, so Cisneros used the telenovelas as the only tool for Cleofilas to see how life can sometimes be. She doesnt know being beaten by her husband is not a normal thing. She is living in the suburbs with her husband with neighbors who in their own way, are trapped as well. Cisneros also shows how life can be for Cleofilas when a mom is not present to guide heir, again, Cleofilass only guide are the television series. “The creek, the televonelas and the border define the mythic spaces given to Cleofilas in her fantasies of escape from a battering husband.”(Mullen 6) The town which Cisneros chose to have as the setting of the story, there isnt much for her to do;” in the town where she grew up, there isnt much to do except accompany the aunts and godmothers to the house of one or the other to play cards.”(Cisneros 44) Using that, Cisneros helps the reader to get a taste of how the environment is. An environment which women dont have a say in, an environment where woman dont have the equal power as men; the environment Cleofilas was raised in.
In the story, Cleofilas starts living in a house in a suburban area. Beaten and neglected by her husband in a house distant from her fathers house” She is beaten by her husband and trapped in a suburban house between two women who are equally trapped: Dolores by the memory of her dead husband and sons, and Soledad, whose husband either died or ran away”(Thomas 3),Both women are in a strange situation “The neighbor lady Soledad liked to call herself a widow, though how she came to be one was a mystery. Her husband has either died, or run away with an ice-house floozie, or simply gone out for cigarettes one afternoon and never came back”(Cisneros 46) And the other neighbor Dolores is, in a sense, in a same situation, “Dolores, kind and very sweet, but her house smelled too much of incense and candles from the alters that burned continuously in memory of two sons who had died in the last war and one husband who had died shortly after from the grief.”(Cisneros 47) Using those two characters, Cleofilas gets a taste of how reality can be; far worse than the situation she is in .Cisneros uses a lot of characters in this story; she uses Cleofilass father, her brothers, husband, neighbors, Felice and the nurse that introduced Cleofiles to Felice. They all serve different purposes. Cisneros uses the characters in the later part of the stories to help Cleofilas understand freedom and what kind of life she had been living ; however, the characters who are closer to Cleofilas are the ones that she had been with all her life, in a sense, stuck with those characters. Through out the plot of