Reading Gender

Short paper – Assignment – Reading gender: The Eternal Feminine

In this play, Castellanos is portraying how men and women are seen in the Mexican culture. It takes place in a beauty shop where the women always go to get fixed up. Some men come up with this stuff that makes the women dream instead of thinking while they are waiting. The men don’t want women to think. It is better that they just look pretty and stay out of the social world. That is where this whole play takes place. It is showing what would have happened if women did think.
In the play The Eternal Feminine, there was a scene that portrayed gender to a T. It was the scene where Lupita falls asleep again and starts to dream about Adam and Eve. This scene portrays men and women as completely different beings. It represents what our world has had to struggle with and over time change. This scene is also very good at representing why women have struggled so long for equality, and what women have had to go through.
In this scene of Adam and Eve, it very quickly portrays the man being higher than the woman. The way Adam speaks to Eve, and how he expects her to do exactly what he says. When Eve questions Adam about why her name is Eve he says, “What do you mean, why? A decent woman doesn’t ask those questions. She obeys and that ends it”. Through that one line, it is very clear that the woman is to do what she is told and that is it. The woman isn’t supposed to ask questions or think about why she is told what she is told, but rather shut up and obey.
The play very easily shows the assumptions of men and women. Some assumptions would include; men are the spokesperson for the women, men are superior to women, and women are made to look pretty and reproduce not represent the family. In the scene with Adam and Eve it clearly validates these assumptions. Adam treats Eve as a lesser person, therefore when Eve gets a chance to “think” she takes it. So when the serpent comes into the picture and tells Eve that she should eat the fruit so that she could be like him, she does. The part with the serpent is a whole story in its self. Through that whole scene the serpent is also representing gender in the way he treats her. In this scene Castellanos is being funny by making Eve worry about clothes and whether or not the fruit will make her fat. The serpent keeps throwing reasons at Eve to why she should eat the fruit, and one of the reasons he says is that she can be free. What he means by being free is that she would be able to think for herself and to make her own decisions. In prior works like in the beauty myth, it talks about how women are supposed to just be beautiful and our minds really don’t matter. Even in FIFE and The F Word there are many chapters over gender in society and how men and women are unequal. They all support what Castellanos is showing in this play. That women aren’t supposed to use their minds, they are just supposed to stay in their place. Yet we all know that today those things are changing, women today are thinking and changing our world.