The Flower
The female characters in the novel, The Flower by Dagoberto Gilb, Silvia, Cindy and Nica, share the traditional gender role of a woman. They all live in this patriarchal system where the man sets the rules and the women abide by them. The main character, Sonny, a fifteen year old boy, shows us the oppressive life style these women face and how their cultural heritage has played a huge role in their lives.
Silvia, the mother of Sonny, was described as a beautiful woman who always dressed so elegant, her clothes were always new, she smelled of perfume, wore sparkling jewelry, her nails were always painted and her high heels were always color coordinated with her outfits. Sonny described Sylvia as a sex object, “How pretty she was in a way men are flipping through pages of dirty magazines” (Gilb10). Silvia didn’t pay much attention to Sonny, he explained a time in the novel when she kissed him, “She kissed me right on the lips. I couldn’t remember the last time she kissed me anywhere, unless it was for show when she’d also be drinking” (Gilb18). Silvia manipulated her way through life by using men; Silvia met a man by the name of, Cloyde Longpre, who would take care of her and her son. Cloyd had provided a home, a car and money for them with the expectation that Silvia would be a stay at home mother, cook for him when he was hungry, cater to any guest who would come over and keep the house clean. Silvia found herself miserable trying to fulfill Cloyd’s expectations. She did not like to cook, did not like to clean, and before she moved in with Cloyd, she had a lady to come and clean her home. Silvia’s life became oppressive because of her dependence on Cloyd, a man she did not love! Silvia seemed to know, no other way to get through life but to use her beauty, it was though she didn’t even know how to love her own children because she was so focused on maintaining herself so she could get through life.
Then there was Cindy, poor little Cindy, a nineteen year old girl who was married to a man who paid no attention to her at all. Cindy flaunted around described as, “Her skin made curves, from a lot below her belly button way up, and it was hard not to pay attention to there because it came so close to those places you weren’t supposed to stare at but couldn’t not at the same time. If the clothes seemed too small, also everything fit her good” (Gilb28). Cindy didn’t have any friends and was left at home with no money, no car and nowhere to go in life. Her husband Tino would work all day and whenever he came home, he expected sex and would then take off and hang out with his buddies. When she met Sonny and the fact that Sonny would acknowledge her, she used her only weapon which was her body and sex. Cindy would seduce Sonny and would vent to him about how miserable she was and how much she hated her husband. She did seem like a depressed young girl who would do anything for affection and to suppress her feelings of loneliness, boredom and feeling unloved, she would smoke weed and drink alcohol. In Cindy’s defense, maybe she knew no other way in her little world, due to her upbringing in life and was raised to grow up and find a man who is supposed to take care of her and in return her job was to put up with any situation that the man put in her way, even a situation of being dependent on a man. Whatever her situation may have been she did not think
or feel very good about herself, because she stayed in a marriage where she would continue to feel alone and unloved.
Nica was around the same age as Cindy. Nica was actually the opposite of Cindy. She was best described by Sonny as. “She was a little girl in a white chiffon dress and black shoes and a pink ribbon. But you do not tell!” She was a little girl” (Gilb164). Nica was pulled out of school by her parents so she could stay home and take care of her baby brother Angelito. It seemed the only two things in life her mother and step father allowed her to interact with, were her younger brother and the T.V. Her parents would not let her out of the house, so when she met Sonny, she was glad to have a level of conversation with someone of her own age. Sonny introduced her to pizza and gave her the opportunity to express her desires of wanting to change her name to Carmen or Cathy and how she did not like being Mexican and how she want to travel to Spain. Nica suffered from a life style that she had no control over. It was her Mexican heritage and upbringing of her own parents that kept her at home to care for her brother and neglect her education. They sheltered her from the world almost as it was her duty to be their personal slave until her debt was paid off!
From a feminist point of view, these women lived an oppressive life style because of the dominate stereotype image that has carried with us for hundreds of years. Until this very day, women suffer from the staggering motto of, “The Man Wears the Pants,” “The Man has the Better Education,” which means, “The man makes more money,” leading the women’s dependence on a man, which brings us back to Silvia, Cindy and Nica who share a common life style, they have all became dependent on a man to provide for them, even if it meant they lived a unhappy.
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