ipl-logo

The Dehumanization Of Women In The House Of The Spirits

1258 Words6 Pages

In a study of print media, researchers at Wesleyan University found that on average, across 58 different magazines, 51.8 percent of advertisements that featured women portrayed them as sex objects. In The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende employs the motif of beauty and expectations as a powerful tool to reveal the dehumanization of women in patriarchal societies, highlighting the ways in which societal norms and expectations reduce women to mere objects of desire and limit their potential as human beings, while also celebrating the strength and resilience of women who challenge and oppose these oppressive societies
The motif of beauty and expectations is introduced in the novel through the character of Rosa, who is praised for her beauty …show more content…

Pancha, a young “peasant” girl that Esteban finds one day, takes advantage of her, in which he then gives her the order to work in the main house the next day. Esteban uses his authority to get whatever he wants. “She continued to weep. Before dropping her off at her hut, the patron kissed her on the lips. “Starting tomorrow, I want you to work in the house””(65) The excerpt represents the dehumanization and objectification of women in Chile by illustrating the ways in which their physical appearance and gender roles are exploited and used against them. The patron's kiss on the lips and his “instruction” (because he later on says it isn’t an order) for her to work in the house shows the expectation that women must be sexually available and subservient to men. The fact that the kiss and “instruction" happens in close proximity to each other suggests that they are linked and that the patron is using his authority and power to manipulate the young woman's emotions and desires, possibly causing Pancha to disregard her rights as a human being. “ Now Esteban took the time to savor her fully and made sure that she felt pleasure too. He explored her slowly, learning by heart the smoky scent of her body and her clothes, which had been washed with ash …show more content…

Esteban’s growing authority tends to make him overlook the lower social class workers. Esteban's focus on the woman's scent, hair, skin, and lips also reinforces the idea that her value is primarily in her physical attributes rather than her humanity. This is further emphasized by the fact that he learns the texture of her skin in the most intimate places, implying that her body is a source of pleasure for him rather than a site of mutual connection and respect. Not only that but it is factual that Esteban later on loses interest in Pancha’s body and begins to ignore her as a

Show More
Related
2418 Words | 10 Pages

In Latino culture, machismo behavior is defined by men that see inferiority in people and expect obedience from them (mostly non-male-bodied individuals). This is illustrated when Blanca invites the pastor and Claudia, a woman from church, to dinner despite Julio’s distaste for it. As a result, Julio snaps at Blanca after her persistent preaching of a church where she is indirectly disrespected and “‘the women are treated as if they were just there to glorify their husbands, their children, and their pastor’” (Quiñonez, 130). Throughout the novel, Blanca is presented as a pious girl, as if she has not changed from the young schoolgirl that Julio fell in love with when he was young.

Read More
732 Words | 3 Pages

Although there are a variety of characters throughout literature that have made sacrifices that expose their values, none of them come close in comparison to the sacrifices of Esperanza in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. The consistent sacrifices displayed through Esperanza’s self-image, innocence, and cynicism express the struggles and desire for feminine individuality and respect that begin for many in childhood and dissolve into adulthood. Not only does Esperanza display these sacrifices constantly throughout the novel, the author’s use of her character as a beacon of catharsis to the reader symbolically represents the majority of women. Much like other women, Esperanza constantly tries to find herself throughout her own sacrifices,

Read More
493 Words | 2 Pages

Esteban throughout the book throws multiple temper tantrums in which he smashes things and in one instance responds violently towards his wife and daughter. Esteban's abuse to his wife has significance to the story as a whole because it causes her to never speak to him again. Early on in the book Esteban rapes many of the young tenants on his Hacienda. This significantly affects the plot because one of the grandchildren who was born from a son of one of the rapes, Esteban garcia, would go on to cause a great amount of pain to the trueba

Read More
1999 Words | 8 Pages

Within that culture though, Esperanza points out the normalization of many terrible aspects of her life, which are more than enough to scar someone for life. As a poor, Chicana woman, she faces the struggles

Read More
707 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the story, Esperanza witnesses the prevalence of gender roles in her community and the domestic responsibilities that fall on women's shoulders. Sandra Cisneros presents insights into women's actualities by showing the emotional and physical

Read More
1032 Words | 5 Pages

The Trueba family owns two estates, one in the city, and one in the country, which is called Tres Marias. Many people work to take care of the estate, including Pedro Segundo Garcia, and his son, Pedro Tercero Garcia. Each time the Truebas visited Tres Marias, Blanca and Pedro would be together, and over time fell in love. Their relationship continued developing, with them even “exploring their deepest intimacy, insatiably entering each other’s skins” (175). Esteban would not approve of this relationship, due to Pedro Tercero’s low class and opposing political standpoints.

Read More
437 Words | 2 Pages

The male-dominated society that Esperanza grows up in forces the idea that women are weak and should stay locked in their houses while men go off to work. The men are immoral and seedy, as expressed in the chapter in which a homeless man leers and asks for a kiss from the little girls. Esperanza experiences the evil of her community when she is sexually assaulted, causing her to lose her previous desire to explore her sexuality. Before being assaulted, she wanted to be “beautiful and cruel” like her friend Sally, because Sally was what she understood to be a perfect woman. However, after her rape she decides that she needs to discover her own identity for herself.

Read More
1093 Words | 5 Pages

Lola takes advantage of her deteriorating mother whose illness represents the declining hold of the norms over Lola. Since her mom “will have trouble lifting her arms over her head for the rest of her life,” Lola is no longer afraid of the “hitting” and grabbing “by the throat” (415,419). As a child of a “Old World Dominican Mother” Lola must be surrounded by traditional values and beliefs that she does not want to claim, so “as soon as she became sick” Lola says, “I saw my chance and I’m not going to pretend or apologize; I saw my chance and I eventually took it” (416). When taking the opportunity to distinguish herself from the typical “Dominican daughter” or ‘Dominican slave,” she takes a cultural norm like long hair and decides to impulsively change it (416). Lola enjoyed the “feeling in [her] blood, the rattle” that she got when she told Karen to “cut my hair” (418).

Read More
1117 Words | 5 Pages

Esperanza is often humiliated not only by where she lives, but also by her physical appearance, hence causing a restriction in her climb to a higher social class. Esperanza is frequently ashamed of her family’s broken-down house in an urban, poor

Read More
1348 Words | 6 Pages

The main protagonist Esperanza, matures from a childish girl to a young confident woman through many critical and life changing events in the story. Ultimately, the author, Sandra Cisneros implements the symbols of confidence, the house on mango street and the metaphor of shoes to show how Esperanza develops into a more mature state. Sandra Cisneros

Read More
157 Words | 1 Pages

Right from the beginning of The House of Mirth, Wharton accentuates the issue of women being objectified in New York City’s wealthy class. There are many expensive, rare, and gilded objects and furnishings, including Percy Gryce’s Americana collection, set throughout the novel, and women, like these possessions, are also portrayed to be decorations made to be admired and publicly displayed. In short, women were like collectible objects: “it was perhaps her very manner of holding herself aloof that appealed to his collector’s passion for the rare and unattainable” (113). Rosedale’s statement quite literally describes Lily Bart as a beautiful item he wishes to obtain. Moreover, women—especially ones of exceptional beauty like Lily Bart—were social

Read More
71 Words | 1 Pages

The things that one culture finds as being normal could be viewed as strange and abnormal to another. The role that women play in “Women in the city of the Dead” would be look be considered abnormal in American women. The fact that women are looked down upon for not being able to conceive a child, but in American culture not being able to conceive a child is a normal

Read More
896 Words | 4 Pages

A Homage to Feminism Feminism revolves around the notion that men and women are equal, an idea that is seldom accepted or embraced at the end of the twentieth century in Latin America. In the autobiographical novel, The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende weaves a story about the lives of women through four generations during the revolution of 1970. The idea of male dominance is prominent throughout both the political and social arenas of Latino communities. However, Allende uses members of the Del Valle family to portray the theme of feminism evolving during this time. Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, highlights the intertwined lives of two Latin American women, Clara and Alba, to parallel the feminist attitudes that associate with

Read More
1476 Words | 6 Pages

In Mexican American society , women are deemed inferior to men, evident in traditional family roles, the male is the head of the family who provides for the family , while the woman stays at home to look after the children she is expected to provide for her husband . In the third vignette of ‘The House on Mango Street’ titled ‘Boys and Girls’ the reader is informed of the division between men and women when Esperanza refers to herself and her sister Nenny , and her brothers, “They’ve got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. But outside they can’t be seen talking to girls”. The male dominance begins at a very young age.

Read More
1441 Words | 6 Pages

Márquez ridicules traditional gender norms and the sociocultural pressures against men and women through repeatedly criticizing gender expectations held by both men and women in the novel. Márquez juxtaposes the role of men with that of women in Colombian society, writing that “brothers were brought up to be men” and “the girls had been reared to get married” (p.30). Contemporary readers may expect the sentence to read ‘the girls had been brought up to be women’ but Márquez wryly mocks Colombian values by challenging the perceptions of gender held by readers. Juxtaposition is utilised by the author to highlight the power imbalance between men and women in Colombian society, effectively satirizing gender roles. Additionally, Márquez shapes meaning in the sentence with diction through the utilisation of the word ‘brought up’ for men, and ‘reared’ for women, a word which is typically reserved for raising animals.

Read More

More about The Dehumanization Of Women In The House Of The Spirits

Related Topics

Open Document