Contemporary Literature
Final Paper

Never Marry Me Sandra Cisneros’ short story “Never Marry a Mexican” details the life of a young, Chicana woman who struggles with an intense yearning and contempt for love and the union of marriage. It opens speaking about her childhood and recounts individual, life-altering events that have led her to foster her adult beliefs as well as her disillusionment with marriage. She has internalized events that occurred in her parent’s marriage and used these to alter her faith in the structure of the traditional, heterosexual marriage contract to the point that she no longer believes it has held up to the norms of society. The protagonist in “Never Marry a Mexican” does indeed love marriage, but because of the events that have transpired throughout her life she chooses to lash out in unusual fashions. Psychologically, she has had to cope with her inability to achieve her ultimate dream, of marrying a white man. She seeks to become something better than she believes that she is capable of on her own or even with a Mexican man. Sandra Cisneros uses the protagonist to show her readers the psychological struggles that women, more specifically, colored women have to contend with on a regular basis. The protagonist makes it clear to the reader that, in this particular case, male infidelity plays a large role in psychologically harming women who otherwise would likely be open to marriage. For example, at one point in the story the protagonist says
“I’ve never married and I never will. Not Because I couldn’t, but because I’m too romantic for marriage. Marriage has failed me, you could say. Not a man exists who hasn’t disappointed me, whom I could trust to love the way I’ve loved. It’s because I believe too much in marriage that I don’t. Better not to marry than live a lie” (69).
Cisneros is using this quote to illustrate that the protagonist believes in marriage, holding it up on a proverbial pedestal. However, because she is so dedicated to the concept, she feels that she could not marry because of her disdain for the actions of men. This disdain has morphed into a prejudiced mindset that fixates on blaming men for her relationship issues. She feels that were she to attempt to cultivate a traditional relationship, the man would disappoint her eventually with infidelity and on that hypothetical premise she has chosen to bar herself from marriage because it would be hypocritical of her to hold the concept of marriage so dearly but then to willingly enter into what she would certainly know to be a broken union. Now this relates directly to the claim of infidelity as her feelings on the subject are derived directly from the series of flings she has had with married men in which she participates in pseudo-relationships as their mistress.
The concern of infidelity the she harbors is a result of her past encounters with the male gender in which she has not only borne witness to unfaithful relationships, but her own machinations have enabled such relationships to exist. This sheds light on her role in witnessing such events has come to shape her feelings of how married men do not value that which they possess to the extent that they would risk all of it and compromise their own morality for sexual release. The protagonist goes so far as to state “All I know is I was sleeping with your father the night you were born,” (76). She is telling the audience that she firmly believes that men are subject to their singular and sexual thought process to the point that they would abandon something as valuable as a loving relationship or the birth of their child for a sexual release. She believes this because she has been an active participant in a particularly abhorrent fashion. Granted, she does not emphasize much in the way of her own culpability but chooses to utilize this as an example of how she feels that marriage has broken down from its roots into more of an unimportant role to many people. She believes marriage is not something to be taken lightly by any means, which is exactly what she feels these men are doing when they sleep with her knowing full well that their families not only need them but are slowly crumbling as a result of it. Ironically, she professes to love marriage and yet here she is harming her own reputation by aiding these men in ruining their own marriages and doing something decidedly anti-feminist by forgoing female solidarity for a twisted knocking of boots with husbands of pregnant women.
The title itself comes from the struggle of race that colored women are subjected to throughout the story. As a Mexican woman herself, she has been told by others since a young age that not being white makes one inferior and that has influenced her dream of wishing to marry a white man. She feels that if she could marry this white man it would prove to herself and to others that she does possess self-worth because for a white man to marry a colored woman would indicate that she possessed a great value, especially if he broke off his marriage to a white woman for her. This debasement of self on the premise of race is further examined by Maythee G. Rojas when he examines a quote by the protagonist mentioning that Drew could never marry her as a result of her race. He sheds light on the subject when he writes “This same rationale permits him to engage sexually with her without responsibility or concern; her subjugation is possible and even expected because she is a woman and a Mexican” (139). What Rojas is saying about the story is that both her gender and race are exactly what keep her from gaining the power she seeks and leaving her in a state of subjugation by her white, male lover. In fact, he goes so far as to say it is expected because perhaps if she were a white woman or a colored man the possibility of her rising above her proscribed station would be possible, but instead she has a dual hindrance that she is unable to overcome . She uses her body as a tool in an attempt to subvert the shackles of her race and gender, but ultimately she realizes that despite her efforts she has little control over how others perceive her. This even leads to her feeling a bit of contempt towards herself for having acted so inappropriately in the past and yet we do not see her reform as she attempt to reboot the cycle with her lover’s teenage boy.
The protagonist has deep-rooted beliefs that she wants only to marry a white man rather than a Mexican man as a result of her mother and father’s relationship in which her mother constantly trashed Mexican men and even cheated on him with a white man. She makes it clear that she believes marrying a white man is a goal of hers when she says “I liked when you spoke to me in my language. I could love myself and think myself worth loving” (74). She says this is reference to her white lover, Drew, who was a man that she was mistress to at one point. She gets a thrill out of exacting her mother’s advice to “never marry a Mexican” and rather associate with white men, which was considered dating up for a Chicana woman in her community. As part of being a Chicana woman, she had to grapple with societal issues on dual fronts from being a woman and from being a colored person simultaneously. As a result, she suffers from self-esteem issues and a lack of self-worth. Her lover makes her feel more confident because he buys her gifts and compliments her in a fashion that she is unaccustomed to. This helps to reward her for the treachery towards her fellow females in momentarily absconding with their men, but most importantly she doesn’t have to feel like a Chicana when she is with these men. They immerse her in a richer culture that speaks English, comes bundled with wealthier means, and are of the “preferred” skin color so she can momentarily forget that she is a Mexican woman herself. She has been around other Mexicans for the better part of her life in the story, which has caused her to nurture an air of contempt for her own race because they are seen as the lower rung of society. Although she detests her mother for what she did to her father and how she would speak ill of Mexican man despite her husband being a Mexican male, she ultimately mirrors her mother in many of her behaviors and actions. It seems as if she was trying to spite her mother’s actions as an adult and that caused her to stoop to a lower level which devalued her ultimate position. In fact, Maythee G. Rojas mentions that the story is similar to the tale of Malinche when he writes “In a sense, through Cisneros's reconstructive and revisionist lenses, Clemencia and her mother engage in a reenactment of the separation that occurs between Malinche and her own mother” (140). Malinche having been the native woman who abandoned her own culture and people in order to become the lover of Hernando Cortés. Malinche become his lover and betrays her people, her mother and family included, for personal gain as well as power. In a sense, Clemencia has also shunned her mother and chosen a vindictive path in which he spites her mother through her actions. She too has chosen to use her sexuality with another man from a different race to leverage as a position of power although her role as mistress means the power is limited and she later realizes that she has accomplished little through her actions.
Being around money and another race she is afforded the opportunity to shed her archaic societal label in exchange for the praise and admiration she so passionately seeks. The issue with her hunger is that it is insatiable as she even mentions that she is merely “borrowing” the men. Thus, she understands that she is teasing herself, especially once she realizes that, just as she is using these men to make herself feel better and for her personal reasons, they are also using her to achieve their own motivations and have absolutely no plans of taking that to another level as there is no need since they get the “best of both worlds”. These men on the one hand are able to cultivate their own families and relationships, but they allow themselves to indulge in a passionate fling which has the reverse effect of what she actually was hoping for. She wanted to feel as if she were elevating herself beyond her means, but in reality the opposite was true and she understands that the relations are only degrading her and paint her as a villainous and perhaps naïve woman. After all, these men would “never marry a Mexican” right?
Sandra Cisneros pulls a number of uncomfortable issues out into the open with the protagonist of “Never Marry a Mexican”. She covers how Chicana women are subjected to not only gender but racial stereotypes as well as pressures that they face to overcome these pressures with unconventional methods. She provides an extreme example of how one woman could potentially deal with the pressures by telling it through a fictional setting. She uses the protagonist to present the issues colored women face in society and how they will sometimes choose to deal with these concerns. She leaves us to mull over the concerns she has raised and to make our own judgments on the cross-section of colored women.

Works Cited

Cisneros, Sandra. "Never Marry a Mexican." In Woman Hollering Creek. New York : Vintage Books, 1992. 68-83.

Rojas, Maythee. "Cisneros's "Terrible" Women: Recuperating the Erotic as a Feminist Source in "Never Marry a Mexican" and "Eyes of Zapata"." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 20.3 (1999): 135-157. Print.