Why Women Love Men By Rosario Ferr? Essay, Research Paper

Why Women Love Men by Rosario Ferr? from The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories I found particularly interesting and beautifully crafted. It?s a story of two women, Isabel Luberza, Ambrosio?s wife, and Isabel la Negra, his lover. When he died, he left each of them with half of his inheritance. At first they thought that he did it on purpose, to ?push [them] both downhill?, to see which one of [them] had won.? But later they realized that he did it to ?meld [them], to make [them] fade into each other, so that [their] true face would finally come to surface?. One of them, Isabel la Negra, was a prostitute, the other, Isabel Luberza, was a lady. But both of them knew that there?s a prostitute in every lady, and vice versa. Both of them wanted to be like the other one, and both of them hid that part under their skin. Ferr? devises a way of underscoring this idea of fractured self by calling them different names like ?Isabel the Slavedriver?, ?Isabel the Red Cross Lady?, ?Isabel the Rumba?, ?Isabel the Popular Party Lady?, ?Isabel the Trastamara?, ?Elizabeth the Black?, ?Saint Elizabeth?, ?Isabel the Black Pearl of the South? to show us how many different sides each of these women had and that put together they were a composite of womanhood as dictated by a chauvinistic, patriarchal society. Isabel Luberza polished her fingernails with ?Cherries Jubilee?, ?the shrill and gaudy color that Negroes usually prefer.? Isabel la Negra dreamt about being a lady, a wife, sitting on the balcony with Ambrosio as an honorable woman. Throughout the story, Ferr? shifts the narrator?s voice between the two women, and sometimes she does it so suddenly that at first it?s impossible to understand who?s the speaker. But as you go deeper into the paragraph, it becomes clear. Although, sometimes, it seems like both women speak at the same time.

As Isabel Luberza sits on the balcony and waits for la Negra to come, she realizes that the image that her husband held up was now dead and she comes to terms with the darker side of herself. At the same time, it seems like la Negra is becoming Luberza, wearing her perfume, her hairdo, and her diamonds. In the shifting monologue, the reader can trace the paths of la Negra and Luberza, as one becomes more respectable through power and wealth and the other embraces a formerly repressed aspect of her femininity, one condemned by her peers and her religion.

Throughout the story the duality of a woman?s self is revealed through the personalities of Isabel Luberza and Isabel la Negra. Ferr? shows us how in each woman two different sides are combined; and in a male-dominated society one of these sides is perceived as good, while the other as bad. Each of these women is expected to fill their roles without deviation from the norms for whore or virgin/saint and in this way be predictable. Given society?s definition of whore and virgin/saint, it?s impossible to assume that the prostitute might have some dignity and that the saint/virgin might be promiscuous or sexually independent. Through telling this story of two different women, and by showing how through their fantasies and aspirations they are so much alike that they practically grow to be one, Ferr? implies that we shouldn?t judge them solely within the narrow confines of societal designations for women, but regard them as whole, paradoxical and complex individuals.

Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories