Expressive with a Source

Cristina Salazar
ENGL 1301 B Paper
Professor: Laurie Buchholz
28 November 2012
A Wife or a Slave? As we are now living in a new millennium, we have encountered that society has not change much when it comes to women duties and rights. Back in the 1950’s almost all the way to the 1980’s, women’s duties were to stay home and take care of everything involving the house as: cleaning, and cooking, and taking care of the kids, etc. The only change that has happened from back in those times is that, we, now as wives have to also bring money to the house which involves getting a job outside the house, and still have to take care of all the house duties. Next, I will talk about how to great professional writers express their own feelings about this issue. Judy Brady talks about how she would like to have a wife in her essay, “Why I Want a Wife” In her essay she explains in detail every single duty a wife does, and also explains how a wife is unappreciated when she says, “If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one.” Sandra Cisneros in her essay, “Only Daughter”, refers to the same issue, being a daughter and becoming a wife to stay home and take care of the house duties as her father wishes her to do so by saying, “My father thought college was good for girls—good for finding a husband.” Next I will talk about how both essays relate to each other, but also different at the same time. The main similarity in both essays is that Brady and Cisneros are trying to persuade the audience to stop a tradition which has been continuously changing as adding more duties to the wife’s role, but not to the women’s advantage. This tradition was that the wife would stay home and take care of the house duties. Throughout the years this tradition has changed as adding more duties to the wives role which include getting a job, and bringing money to the house, and still take care of everything else. Brady and Cisneros both express in their essay how man (Brady’s friend and Cisneros’s Father) describe how women in these case wives supposed to be like. Brady explains how men and society classify women (wives) as, and also expresses her anger about how easy is for men to just replace their wives as we all should have the same qualities as explained in a wife’s role by saying, “Not too long ago a male friend of mine appeared on the scene fresh from a recent divorced. He had one child, who is, of course, with his ex wife. He is looking for another wife.” In the same way, Cisneros talks about the issue by saying, “Being only a daughter for my father meant my destiny would lead me to become someone’s wife. That’s what he believed.” With these two examples from both essays, we can see how both writers have the same purpose which is to persuade the audience to break the tradition known as, wives stay at home and take care of everything so that man(husbands) don’t have to worry about anything else other than bringing money home. Other similarities between Brady and Cisneros are how they express their concern about wife’s duties being more challenging, and unappreciated. Brady expresses her concern by saying, “Naturally, I will expect a fresh, new life; my wife will take the children and be solely responsible for them so that I am left free.” In the same manner Cisneros talks about how her father is disappointed of her for not yet being someone’s wife, and having wasted six years of education by saying, “After four years of college and two more in graduate school, and still no husband, my father shakes his head even now and says I wasted all that education.” We all need to break this tradition; we all are responsible for the continuation of the tradition. We need to stop adding more to the wife’s role and make it more equal for men and women, as to share the duties and responsibilities of the house, and also the care of the children. The same way both, Cisneros and Brady have similarities in their essays, they also differ from one another. Cisneros essay, “Only Daughter” focuses on the way Hispanic men (in this case Mexican men) think a wife’s role should be by saying, “I am the only daughter of a Mexican family of six sons.” On the other hand, Brady talks about how men in general think a wife’s role should be like, and has been like. Brady’s essay doesn’t focus on just one ethnicity, instead, she talks about women in general by saying, “I belong to that classification of people known as wives. I am A Wife. And, not altogether incidentally, I am a mother.” With these examples, we can see how one same subject (issue) which concerns women can differ the way they express their concern, even though their purpose may be the same, which is to persuade their audience to break the tradition on how men and society looks at wives. Another difference between them two is that Brady is actually a wife expressing her concern about the situation, and how she wants it to stop, and become a better-equal-opportunity-society for both man and woman by saying, “I would like to go back to school so that I can become economically independent, support myself, and, if need be, support those dependent upon me.” On the contrary, Cisneros, not married yet, expresses her concern about the situation on how she would like her father to look at women differently than the way he does, but she also expresses how lucky she was that her father thought like that, giving her the opportunity to go to college and become a professional by saying, “In retrospect, I’m lucky my father believed daughters were meant for husbands. It meant it didn’t matter if I majored in something silly like English. After all, I’d find a nice professional eventually, right?” We can see how Brady and Cisneros are worried about one same issue, but they differ from why they are worried about it. In conclusion to these two essays, and how they have similarities and differences on one same subject, in this case, women (wives) looked as slaves by men and society, it comes down to we are all equal, and we all should break this tradition, and give the same responsibilities and duties to men and women. We are living in the new millennium, and it’s sad to see how society is advancing in so many different ways, but it is also staying behind in other things as women being a slave of their husbands. We all need to change as time is passing by, but we all have to do it because it will benefit all of us in the future. Should women be categorized under being a Wife or a Slave?