When Women Love Men
The story titled When Women Love Men demonstrates an excellent example of race and class within the Caribbean. There are two different women in this story, both being total opposites of each other. The first woman is a white middle-class woman whose husband has just recently passed away. She only inherited half of her husband's possessions. The other woman is a black prostitute who is the mistress to the white middle-class women husband. She inherited the other half of his inheritance. From the start of the story, there was a clear difference between the two women. It almost creates tension between the two women with all of their vast differences. One woman being an upright middle-class white woman and the other being a black prostitute. I find it interesting that the husband found both of these women equally important to him. He clearly thought they were important enough to be able to split his inheritance. So the question is, what makes these women different but the same? What was so special about the black prostitute women and his white middle-class wife? My best guess is that the women complimented each other on the man's different needs. Knew understood and knew what both women had to offer and he would use both of them interchangeably for what he needed. The biblical verse at the beginning of the story also is significant in the way that this story is against everything the quote is about. "For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. For now we will see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face" (Saint Paul, Epistle to the Corinthians). These two women had such love towards one man which I consider the man being imperfect. The two women are perfect that makes the man a whole.
It is definitely interesting that there is this sense of the two women creating one for Ambrosio, especially when he treated them equally in his will. I think this is a great example of double consciousness. The two women are the two extreme sides of a personality, both of them caught between the two clashing worlds that they find themselves in. They don't want to be in the role they are forced into, yet they are afraid to venture out past it. That is, until Ambrosio dies. I think he was the representation of an oppressive force- the colonizing force. The two women seem to symbolize the two groups that became part of the Caribbean identity- the native population who were treated poorly and as if they were "lesser", and the Europeans who came to the islands during colonialism and were seen as rich/more elite. When the colonizer leaves (Ambrosio here), the two grow to coexist and actually thrive in who they are. Your point about the two women equaling a whole for Ambrosio made me think of the text in a larger symbolic sense!
ReplyDeleteThe author creates this perfect perspective on the theme of race, class and gender. We see class heavily stressed in the Caribbean communities in the short stories we have read but the way everything in this story is perfectly portrayed together really gives readers a sense of what it was truly like in the Caribbean. I focused most of my attention on how the similarities of the women brought the characters closer to me while reading because of how they were both brought down by the actions of the husband and they now have to live with the consequences. I agree the husband is the imperfect theme in the short story rather than these women who feel they were not good enough for the man.
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