To me, one of the most intriguing themes with these two stories was the idea of pride.
In "Maria Concepcion," Maria C. is a very prideful woman. We know this because she got married in the church when most other people just got married in the back of the church, "But Maria Concepcion was always as proud as if she owned a hacienda" (4). She is also prideful because even though she is pregnant she is still going in to town to sell fowls. After she finds out that Maria Rosa has run away with Juan, she is very upset and the townspeople reason, "that she was being punished for her pride. They decided that this was the true cause for everything: she was altogether too proud. So they pitied her" (9). Juan also likes how he feels when he has two women, and he boasts about it. Pride also comes into play when Lupe decides not to "ruin" Maria Concepcion by telling on her because, "it was even sweeter to make fools of these gendarmes who went spying on honest people" (19).
On the other hand, there is Ruben in "The Martyr" and his complete lack (in my opinion) of pride. He is lustful after Isabel, and doesn't care who knows it. He also loses his pride in his work and is unable to finish it.
Another thing that I found interesting was how food plays into this idea of pride. In "Maria Concepcion," making food for your man becomes a big issue. She takes so much pride in making food for Juan that when she is pregnant she still goes to his worksite to bring food to him, and she looks down on Givens who does not have a woman to make food for him, "She stood and regarded Givens condescendingly, that diverting white man who had no woman of his own to cook for him, and moreover appeared not to feel any loss of dignity in preparing his own food" (7). Also (I may be stretching here but humor me) Juan stops eating her food (Givens says, "Leave his food. The others will eat it" (7).) and she loses some of her pride because he runs off with the honey girl and the townspeople start to pity her, but then when he returns part of their cover is how she makes him food and magically her pride returns (he doesn't even seem upset that Maria R has died, which is a whole other post). She also seems to take pride in making the goat's milk for the baby at the end.
Food also becomes intertwined with the issue of pride in "The Martyr." Ruben loses his pride so he starts to eat a lot, and it is his love of food that causes his heart attack. He also eats only the best food. I also find it interesting that in her letter Isabel says, "I am going away with someone who will never allow me to cook for him..." (34), and this seems to be a source of pride for her.
What do you all make of this? Am I stretching the food/pride connection, or is there something there?
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2 comments:
I agree with you that food is linked to Maria Concepcion's pride. However, I believe food to play a much more interesting role in "The Martyr". The descriptions of Ruben remind me of something from Oprah. His emotions of loss for his lover are completely intertwined with his need to eat. In “Maria Concepcion,” I believe the food serves more as a symbol of familial obligation, whereas in “The Martyr,” food serves as a symbol of the protagonist’s emotional trauma.
I think this is a great point of interest--cool reading! I think food in these stories has to be considered in terms of gender and use-value of a character. In M.C., the woman are producers and the men are consumers. But in the Martyr, Ruben is an artist--and artists are often stigmatized as being unproductive. They don't contribute to the real workings of the society-- they are outside the chain of necessary supply and demand so to speak. The other half of this stigma concerns gender: men who are artists, who don't produce or work a "real" work day, are considered emasculated and effeminite. It would be interesting to compare the cultural perceptions of this use-value stigma in Mexican and Spanish cultures vs. the United States.
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