Sandra Cisneros Gender Roles

One aspect of life that transcends ethnicity and nation is gender. Gender is at time thought to be innate and at others it is thought to be learned; so too Chicano and Asian American gender dynamics are learned, even though they may differ with some of the norms in American culture. Women are often seen as inferior to men and many times society embraces this inequality until it becomes a part of the structure of society. Sandra Cisneros and Amy Tan’s characters both represent the structural oppression of women and how they question and challenge gender roles through their relationship with men. According to CliffNotes, gender roles “are cultural and personal. They determine how males and females should think, speak, dress, and interact within …show more content…
Cisneros and Tan both exemplifies the lives of women with traditional gender roles. The importance of gender that was placed on Cleofilas, Lindo, and Ying-Ying caused them all to be trapped within the confines of their marriages, no matter how miserable they are because of it. Because of how hopeless they felt in their relationships, they defined their gender norms. Cleofilas was faced with the thought of frowning her son and possibly herself within the creek that she grew to admire. Instead of taking the cowardly act of infanticide and suicide, Cleofilas runs away with a woman, Felice, who is the embodiment of an empowered woman. “Everything about his woman, this Felice, amazed Cleofilas. The fact that she drove a pickup. A pickup, mind you, but when Cleofilas asked if it was her husband’s, she said she didn’t have a husband. The pickup was hers. She herself had chosen it. She herself was paying for it” (Cisneros 55). The freedom that happiness gave her, Felice, allowed her to finally break the chains of male oppression. Lindo Jong was also able to capture freedom in The JOY LUCK CLUB. Using her mother-in-law’s superstition against her, Lindo was able to concoct a story which made her mother-in-law believe that Lindo’s marriage was not ordained by the ancestors. Therefore the marriage was annulled so that her husband could marry his “true” wife who was carrying his “spiritual child”. “How nice it is to be that girl again, to take off my scarf, to see what is underneath and feel the lightness come back into my body” (Tan 66). The ending other marriage meant the ability to continue her halted childhood and the chance to be happy again. Like Cleofilas and Lindo, Ying-Ying was married young and in a one-sided marriage. After her husband left and she aborted her child, she had nothing left. Even after she moved on and married