Applying Critical Thinking and Terms to the Play Real Women Have Curves - Essay Example

Essay, English Topic: Analysing the play "Real women have curves" and applying critical thinking and terms. Introduction: In all cultures, a girl child is victimised, the question is about the degree of victimisation. She faces challenges at every turn of life, its magnitude and dimensions may differ, but they are there right from the moment of birth, notwithstanding the fact that it is she who sacrifices at those turns. In most of the societies they are not considered as the legal or the spiritual equals of men. But God has selected the woman, not the man, to give protection for the initial nine months to His creative force! This is the common thinking line of Josefina Lopez, in all her literary creations, whether it is a novel or the play. She is part of the problem and she participates in their solutions through literature. The colours may vary, her canvass is the same. Her thinking has something to do with her upbringing in a traditional Mexican household, the history and geography of it where menfolk are invariably served food first, not necessarily the prime items, but the leftovers. It is a herculean effort for the woman to nurture her body, spirit and soul. “Real Women Have Curves”, is her autobiographical play with a difference. She creates a play that depicts feminist consciousness clubbed with working-class consciousness. She defends womanhood with an approach of sarcasm. She does not pity her, condemn her, but wonders how a woman has to bear with so much pressure, to nurture her body image. The shape of her body is important to her; it is also important to menfolk. The story relates to a young woman who wants to go to college but the family pressurises her to work, obviously to earn. The important issues of oppression grounded on gender, class and ethnicity, coupled with the immigration problems of the Latino community are meaningfully classified in the play. On the whole, the play is a feminist narrative of upward mobility and it is a working class play. Women who wish to achieve success in life need to take Josefina as the model. Her life lets you know how to remain unbeatable in adversaries and triumph in the end. She is a Latina, an utterly traditional community, that puts many hurdles in the path of a progressive woman, and yet she succeeds in breaking out from that set up, and designs her own pattern of life. From the point of view of a reviewer and critic, the characters speaking Spanish may be a problem, but it keeps the authenticity of the dialogues, for each community and each language has something that is un-translatable, and needs to make meaning in the original form. In brief, “Real Women Have Curves,” is the ‘biography’ of the Latino community. The author’s Chicana pride triumphs over all odds. In the play immigration has been shown as a persecution the Latino has to undergo and the author identifies the characters with one’s real-life experiences. Coming to the plot of the play proper, “Real Women Have Curves”, highlights the relationship between five Latina women. When women from common background join together, they unknowingly form a ‘union’ (not in the trade union sense of the term). In that association they share their sorrows and joy, mostly sorrows, as they belong to poor immigrant families. The story relates to the year 1987, when the problem of immigrants is the highly discussed in the American sociological and political circles. One of the five women, Ana is ambitious, she is a fresh high school graduate, and she has great dreams to achieve success in life, that too as a writer. A writer, with the writing skills and passion to transform the society, is able to achieve something tangible to the ethnic group to which she belongs. This seems to be the agenda of Ana. In the play under review she aims to achieve her objectives by describing the physical beauty of the multi-generational families, who have achieved prosperity as participants in the American Dream. She has no ambiguities or fear about breaking the traditional mold of Latino and charter a new path, especially for the females. The play is a capsule of Latino immigrant experience, and women bear the brunt of the harsh part of it. In societal terms this play sends the waves of fresh water gushing forth in the literary scene of America. America is evolving with the ingress of people from different ethnic communities, and so also the boundaries of the traditional community theatre are expanding. The standards of living of Latinos are poor and they are exposed to opulence of America. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo writes, “Unlike the working poor who toil in factories and fields, domestic workers see, touch, and breathe the material and emotional world of their employers’ homes. They scrub grout….launder and fold clothes, mop, dust, vacuum….Inside the palatial mansion, the sprawling ranch-style home, or at the modest duplex, they do these activities over and over again.”(xi) They do these works in all seasons, rain or shine! The aspirations and imaginings of the people of the communities are highlighted through the plays that take original themes, hitherto not experimented on the stage. An immigrant community passes through different stages of its existence, and the process its assimilation in the mainstream society may take a couple of generation, depending upon the willingness and capacity of the community to adapt to the circumstances and co-exist. A playwright has to capture the mood of the society at a given time, and when the members of the community are undergoing a period of economic suffering, entertainment issues will have limited meaning for them. When tomorrow’s bread is not assured from today’s labour, stage experiments needs to involve and serve the community. They need to represent the cause of the community. A writer may try intelligently to stay apart from the characters, but rarely succeeds in the endeavor and reflection of author’s points of view can be gauged by the discerning reader. Same is the case with this of the author of the play. The situations are hilarious as well as realistic because they are real life experiences, either own or seen. Latino spectators will be able to relate and associate their experiences with the various scenes depicted in the play. Stephanie Shaw writes, “Estela (Maricela Ochoa, whose charisma does much to salvage this production) is an undocumented factory owner in danger of losing her sewing equipment (and being deported) if she doesn't finish a large order of dresses in time to make her payments.”(Shaw, n. d.) This small observation indicates much about the immigrant problem in America and throws light on a major national issue. At the same time it highlights the wide gap that exists between the rich and the poor. The following conversation between Ana and Pancha reveals the ground realities, when Estela pressurises Ana to iron the finished dresses fast. “ It's not that I don't iron fast enough, it's that whenever I finish ironing a dress I stop for a minute to really look at it. I never realized just how much work, puro lomo, as my mother would say, went into making it. Then I imagine the dress at Bloomingdale's and I see a tall and skinny woman looking at it. She instantly gets it and with no second thoughts she says, "Charge it!" She doesn't think of the life of the dress before the rack, of the labor put into it. I shake the dress a little and try to forget it's not for me. I place a plastic bag over it then I put it on the rack and push it away. It happens to me with every dress”. (Act II, 50) The unscrupulous factory owners exploit the helpless Latino laborers, pay them less, and the labor has no other alternative as they are unauthorised immigrants and on being found out by the immigrant police, they are liable to be deported. They just make both ends meet and not in a position to absorb any type of shocks, be it social or economic. As such they work in secret dens, with windows and doors shut, in the sweltering heat of the factory and the fear of raid constantly looms large on their day to day existence. These curves mentioned in the title of the play do not represent the beauty of the body; they are not the curves of the body of the models, film actresses or beauty queens, but those of hardworking women. They are the curves of their strength and determination. The author is the rebel against all procedures that are laid down to restrict the progress of women by men and the society in general. She desires that each woman should identify the adverse circumstances that she is placed in and challenge them to seek the corrective responses. The first asset of women is love, but love without knowledge places her in a weak position. A woman should not exploit any relationships and she should allow others to exploit her. She should not try to hide her body nor hate it. Instead of trying to fit into the circumstances, challenge them and empower—this is her universal message to the women. The hidden agenda of this play, “Real Women Have Curves”, is “Real Women Have Nerves’! Lopez never fully develops the characters or the situation. This is a good technique in the play. A character need not develop fully. The moment the objective is served through the character, he/she must quit. It is futile to expect that all the characters will have impact on the outcome of the play from the beginning to the end. The author depicts well how women are in a desperate situation and they have to bear pressure from more than one front. A dominating overbearing chief at the workplace, ongoing threat of raids from the immigrant authorities, crammed workplace, hot and humid with workers breathing on one another, Ana’s bossy attitude towards others resulting in the clash of superiority and inferiority complexes and more! But the problems related to day to day workings are created and solved then and there. Do not expect any profound philosophical depths from the disposition of the characters. They are so busy in earning their day to day bread and tackling other familial problems; they do not have time to reach up to the sky to think about the presiding deity in the heavens or matters related to baptism and salvation. They remain engulfed in secular realities without let up or intermission. After enduring the problems at the workplace, they have to bear with the issue in the domestic environment. But within the circumstances she is placed in Ana does not forget the cause of emancipation of women. “When the dour, abused Pancha (Rosemarie Casas, stepping in for Carole Gutierrez) receives a lecture about women's rights from Ana, she reacts with a wholly believable jaded contempt. But later she follows Ana's advice to stand up to her husband, thanking Ana the next day with a kiss and a hug.” (Shaw, n. d.)This small episode in the play reveals more than a chapter in any book. The author is silent, how the husband is tamed, and leaves the issue to the imagination of the viewers. But the broad hint is given that women now know how to handle the situation of domestic violence and they cannot be taken for granted. Women strip in this play and laugh if you have guts!! What an irony the author has created to depict the working conditions of poor helpless women! Is there a precedent in the history of the dramas, for description of such a scenario! Only the one who has undergone such sufferings can understand what does this mean! Women generally strip to exhibit their assets either for fame or for money or for the pleasure-seeking men folk! Unable to bear the heat the women strip down to the underwear. Is this scene meant for comedy? Even if you laugh momentarily, the internal anguish involved in the incident will definitely make one cry silently for life. But the mischievous aspect of the mind of women is revealed in the scene immediately thereafter, and credit must go the director for this bold move. Shaw depicts the scene thus, “Estela, for instance, who all along has insisted that the windows and doors remain closed, does an abrupt about-face and allows them to be opened when the ladies are sitting around in their underwear…. When summer heat forces a roomful of chicks to strip to their underwear, flesh suddenly becomes political: Baby got back, and she’s proud to show it off.”(Shaw, n. d.) After irony, comedy is immediately introduced. But the point of view of the author is clearly conveyed and this is good lateral thinking on the part of the director. Conclusion: Josefina Lopez gives the clear message to the Latino women. Fight at every turn of your life, because you are victimised at every turn of life. If you are not willing to challenge the social evils, and the issues related to the immigration, your sons and daughters will do that. Have the will to progress and grow and grow you will! Works Cited Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. University of California Press; 2001, Print. Lopez, Josefina. Real Women Have Curves. Dramatic Pub Co; 1996, Print. Shaw, Stephanie. Real Women Have Curves | Performing Arts Review | Chicago Reader, n. d. Web: http://www.chicagoreader.com/…es/Content?oid=883127, Accessed on May 14, 2013 Read More