Eng 200 - Comparison and Contrast Essay

Shelby Stevens

Tom Williams

ENG 200

December 27, 2015

Comparison Contrast Essay

When one thinks about a woman's roles as a wife or partner, many think that women shouldn't have a role while others think that women should.  Majority of people think a woman's role is to tend to the house, kids, cook, clean and pretty much just be a trophy for the husband. In Never Marry A Mexican and After Rosa Parks the women in the stories are not so normal women and completely go against the normal gender roles of women.

In the book Never Marry A Mexican, the main woman of the story  goes against everything classified as the normal gender roles for a woman. For instance Cisneros writes, "Mexican girl who couldn't even speak Spanish, who didn’t know enough to set a separate plate for each course at dinner, nor how to fold cloth napkins, nor how to set the silverware." (Cisneros 110)  In this story basically this girls mom is the one who struggled with the gender roles, the mother came from a background where she wasn’t taught the "normal" gender roles. So the daughter realizes this and it almost seems by reading that she rebels against being the normal woman.  The daughter literally helps men cheat on their wife's,  "I've been an accomplice, committed pre-meditated crimes. I'm guilty of caused deliberate pain to other women." (109) In normal gender roles as a woman, helping a man cheat on his wife is just

In Never Marry A Mexican, the daughter goes on to say that she will never get married   and that every man in her life has let her down at some point in her lifetime. "I'll never marry. Not any man." ( 109)  "Not a man exists who hasn’t disappointed me." The daughter has a hard time with marriage so therefore it doesn’t fit gender norms for a woman.

In the book After Rosa Parks, the woman in the book is pretty much the "man" of the family, she is raising a child fatherless. So therefore she doesn't fit the "woman" gender role. The woman in the story is also divorced, which is something the woman struggles with because she worries about her son and she also says "Divorce is not a sin." (Desaulniers 129) She also worries about her child because the child is in a spilt home "See, he's only an only child, and he lives half his time with his dad in their house and half his time with me in ours." (130)  Coming from a split home is hard for a child and even though the mom in the story is having a hard time with gender norms, the child also struggles with it.

Also the woman is afraid that the everybody thinks that the divorce and the spilt home is her fault. " Ellie understood what the nurse was thinking, probably it was Ellie's fault." (131) Divorce is not a normal gender role because in some cultures divorce is awful. No matter what happens in a relationship the couples should have to work together and fix the problem, that is what makes a relationship strong.

In the book Never Marry a Mexican,  the girl is struggling to fit gender norms. The woman goes back and forth between wanting to be wanted by a man and not being wanted by a man. For example, "I admit, there was a time when all I wanted was to belong to a man. To wear that gold band on my left hand and be worn on his arm like an expensive jewel." ( Cisneros 109). The woman in this book still wants to belong to a man or she wouldn’t try to make other women feel pain by cheating with the other women's husband. She also at the end of the story admits that she wants to be with a man:      

Human beings pass me on the street, and I want to reach out and strum them as if they were guitars. Sometimes all humanity strikes me as lovely. I just want to reach out and stroke someone, and say There, there, it's all right, honey." (119)

So by the end of the story she wants this relationship between a partner but doesn’t want to fit the normal gender roles as a wife.

In the book After Rosa Parks the woman in this story is not trying to fit in with the gender norms. She realizes that she is divorced and there is nothing she can do about it. All she knows is that she needs to be there for her little boy and lead him into the right path. She also realizes that being divorced doesn’t matter to anything. "Divorce is no sin." (Desaulnier 129).