To Suffer for Love Gives Women Strength

The short story The Woman Hollering Creek was the first in the book to convince me of the novel portraying women as strong, steadfast, brave creatures. Prior to reading the story I was skeptical, and am still overall. However this story was beautiful in that it depicted tragedies in life and a woman's ultimate overcoming of abuse, neglect, judgement, and fear.

One sentence that in my opinion captured a large theme in the novel reads, "Because to suffer for love is good. The pain all sweet somehow. In the end" (45). Many of the short stories in this novel show love as being paid for by pain. It is never easy or beautiful in this novel. Love is often distorted, neglected, abused much like the female characters throughout the novel. All the women suffer greatly, be it because of abuse or because of a man who loves other women. I also relate that quote to the tragic love story in Never Marry a Mexican. I find that the women in these stories are strong in their attempts to suffer through love, instead of changing their own fate. Does this ultimately make them weak? I'm not sure.

In The Woman Hollering Creek, Cleofilas is not only strong in that she willingly suffers in love, but that she ultimately does change her fate. She leaves. She goes back to her father, even though she knows the ramifications of crossing Hollering Creek in the opposite direction. This to me was the first time I saw a woman not as a victim, but as the decider of her own fate and destiny. I found this story to be heart wrenching and undeniably tragic, but one of a journey to become a strong Mexican Woman.