Kayla Diaz

Professor Campbell

English 104C

20 May 2020

Literary Analysis Paper #2

In the Novel “The Barbarian Nurseries” by Héctor Tobar, we see a lot of Feminist Critism

throughout the book. It goes a long way from relationships, power characters, traits, genders, and

terms. We are seeking a view to look at women in a new perspective and understand some type

of background or history, it helps us establish the importance of women being lost in a male

dominated world. In the beginning of the novel we get introduced to Araceli, who is a

Mexican-Amerian maid who works for the Torres-Thompson family. We see the relationship

between men and women within the book because all the women are maids while the men are

doing other duties like the lawn, or hardware. These male and female roles are defined because

it’s typical that the woman is in the kitchen cooking or cleaning, taking care of the children, and

the male is doing something completely different, which usually consists of doing hardware, or

any other activity then cooking or cleaning. I feel like we have a stereotype where women have

to be in the kitchen or cleaning, when sometimes we are used to it from our culture. For example

I’m mexican and a lot of the time my great-grandma would always be making a meal for anyone

that came over and was always cleaning, and when I asked her about it, she made it seem like it’s

okay for women to be in the kitchen, that's how it should be. I think there's a line in where you

think something should still be in place or it could change. I definitely do agree though that there

is a power relationship between men and women, which is when we assume roles from what I

just explained. Almost everyone assumes the role of Araceli, because she's a Mexican-American

and working for a family she's automatically assumed the role of being a maid (which she is) and

taking care of keeping the house clean and kept at a certain level. Each character in the book

does take a personality trait from the opposite gender, like Araceli ended up trying to escape

immigration officials, who will most likely be looking for her and she ends up escaping with

Felipe. All this happened because the parents ended up leaving the children with her against her

will with no communication whatsoever and Araceli ended up taking the children on an

adventure through Los Angeles, but after the parents coming home to an empty house and

realizing what they had done they called the police. Araceli knew what was bound to happen by

then because she didn't have immigrartion papers. In the beginning you would think a character

like Araceli would be the one not even putting herself in a situation where the immigration could

find her or even make herself notice, not trying to put the kids in harm's way at all or get herself

in trouble. This is where the roles switch because just because she's a maid and has common

Literary analysis paper #2

English Literature to 1760 (ENGL 211 C)