The Myths Helena Maria Viramontes Analysis

I could hear them gossiping in the seat behind me on the bus, about Lyla, a cryptic like woman that lived on my block, about five doors away. She came out of a cab on crutches last night, which wasn’t a big surprise; because it wasn’t the first time she had been spotted like that. She spent much of the time wearing vast, dark glasses. Maybe she wanted an air of mystery, but the real mystery was whether she was hiding a black eye or not. “Well she is definitely putting up with something that she shouldn’t,” hollered the taller girl, with an air of authority. “You can see it on her face!” “Of course you could see it on her face! The bruises! It will be her fault if those babies suffer,” explained the other, shaking her head. I couldn’t help …show more content…
Unfortunately, another role that literature has played is in setting the dominant perspective on a situation. In this case I was thinking about the interaction of different groups, who do not have the dominant voice. I had been thinking about where those interests come together as shared objectives, versus when they come into conflict, creating further disruption to making clear the non-dominant view.
In Helena Maria Viramontes's short story "The Moths” there is yet another variation on this theme of conflict by those who have non-dominant voice, and it becomes clear how this reinforces the dominant voice. The narrator describes her sisters and family threatening her if she is “disrespectful,” with most of the respect consisting of behaving in line with expectations created by the dominant class (Viramontes, …show more content…
For those that are actively working to make positive changes in the lives of women across a number of spheres, whether developing nations, national labor policies or reproductive rights, questioning the “stop violence against women” mantra results in a heated debate and a recitation of the facts, which are startling and terrible- about the conditions under which many women are forced to live. This emotional attachment prevents the greater understanding of how the problem of the threat of violence is one that is shared among other groups. For lesbians, the intersection of gender and sexual orientation is one that can result in feeling discriminated against or even threatened, but we can also assume that this is true of homosexual men as well. As an issue it continues to intersect with gender