Last Updated on May 17, 2018, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 970

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Izaura and Yolanda: friends of Esperanza’s mother

Beautiful & Cruel

Esperanza says she is the ugly girl in the family, so no husband will come for her. Nenny, who is pretty, says she won’t wait around forever for a husband. She wants to be able to choose who or what takes her away from home. Esperanza says that Nenny can talk about choices because she is pretty. Esperanza decides not to “grow up tame” and grow old waiting for a husband. She wants to be powerful like the beautiful women in the movies, so she decides to get her power from a different source: she begins to behave like a man.

A Smart Cookie

Esperanza’s mother says that she “could’ve been somebody”—a singer, perhaps, or an artist—but she isn’t because she quit school. She confesses to Esperanza that she quit because she was ashamed of her clothes.

What Sally Said

Sally’s father has been beating her. She tells people at school that she fell, but no one believes that’s how she got her bruises. She says her father never hits her hard, but Esperanza knows that more than once he has lost control and beaten Sally very badly. He beats her because he doesn’t want her to bring shame on the family like his sisters did.

Once Sally tried to stay with Esperanza’s family for a while, but Sally’s father came to get her. He said he was sorry for what he’d done and that it wouldn’t happen again. A few days later, however, when he saw her talking to a boy, he beat her so badly she couldn’t come to school for several days.

Analysis

Esperanza believes that beauty is a form of power: it allows women like Nenny, who “has pretty eyes,” to “pick and choose.” Esperanza isn’t beautiful, but she wants to be like the women in the movies: the “beautiful and cruel” women who are independent and powerful because their beauty gives them control of men.

Esperanza decides to rebel against the patriarchal society that expects her to suppress her individuality and “grow up tame.” She decides she won’t be “like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.” This is a powerful

image—waiting for marriage is like waiting for the guillotine, and marriage is a form of slavery. Given the marriages Esperanza sees around her, however, it should not be a surprise that this is how she views marriage.

To fight against the powerful force of machismo, Esperanza decides to wage a “quiet war.” She will not fill the traditional female role. Instead, she will behave like a man, leaving her dishes at the table instead of clearing them away. She is beginning to act like her independent, wild great-grandmother, and that should give us hope. Esperanza lives in a different world where a woman cannot simply be thrown over the shoulder like a sack and forced to marry. She is much more likely to win her war.

That is, if she doesn’t let shame stop her. In “A Smart Cookie,” we learn that shame—which Esperanza has felt so acutely in a number of vignettes—prevented Esperanza’s mother from being “somebody.” Her mother, who is a first generation Mexican-American, has many talents—she can sing, draw, and speak two languages fluently—but she has no diploma, and, hence, no inde¬pendence. Though she has lived in their city all her life, she can’t go on the train downtown without Esperanza’s help. She has built herself a small, “safe” world in the Chicano community and in her home, but she longs to see the world outside it.

Esperanza’s mother is adamant that Esperanza finish school and do well. She wants Esperanza to have what she did not—an education and a career, something more to live for than just a man. Women who live only for their men are “fools,” she says, citing Madame Butterfly, who kills herself because the man she loves leaves her. She also mentions two of her friends, Izaura and Yolanda, who are lost without their husbands. “Got to take care all your own,” her mother says (got to be independent).

What made Esperanza’s mother quit school was shame. She was ashamed of her clothes, which weren’t “nice.” This brings to mind “Chanclas,” where Esperanza almost “quit” because she was ashamed of her shoes. Older and wiser, Esperanza’s mother is now disgusted with herself. She realizes that her lack of education has left her trapped, like so many others, behind the same rolling pin Alicia is trying to avoid.

Shame is a very powerful emotion, as Esperanza knows. She must learn to avoid it, to be happy with herself no matter what clothes she wears or where she lives, because shame does indeed “keep you down.”

It is shame, too, that drives Sally’s father to beat her as if she were “an animal.” His sisters brought shame on his family by running away—they ran off with men or because of men—so Sally’s father refuses to let her wear make-up or talk to boys. When she tries to escape to Esperanza’s house he tells her it’s the last time, but his shame runs too deep. As soon as he saw Sally “talking to a boy…he just went crazy, he just forgot he was her father between the buckle and the belt.” Because he is the one with power, his shame keeps Sally down as well, trapped inside the house after school and perpetually black and blue. Sally’s potential to be “beautiful and cruel” is literally being beaten out of her.