What is Cleofilas full name in Woman Hollering Creek?
Cleófilas Enriqueta DeLeón Hernández
The protagonist of “Woman Hollering Creek,” a woman who marries Juan Pedro and moves with him from Mexico to the United States despite her father’s misgivings.
What is the role of Cleofilas in Woman Hollering Creek?
Cleófilas is the protagonist of the title story “Woman Hollering Creek”, who recreates the image of la llorona. She is a traditional Mexican woman who naïvely allows her father to give her in marriage to a man who would become her abusive, unfaithful husband.
What does the narrator say Cleofilas had always said she would do if a man any man were to strike her?
She had always believed that “she would strike back if a man, any man, were to strike her.” Instead, when Juan Pedro first hits her, “she had been so stunned, it left her speechless, motionless, numb.” Unbelieving and forgiving when the abuse begins, Cleofilas wonders why her pain goes beyond the sweet pain of her soap …
How does Cleofilas react the first time her husband hits her?
The first time Juan Pedro hits her, Cleófilas doesn’t even try to defend herself. Although she’s always vowed to herself that she’d hit back if a man ever laid his hands on her, she just stands there as her lip bleeds. Later, she strokes Juan Pedro’s “dark curls” as he weeps “tears of repentance and shame.”
Where does Cleofilas get her ideas about love?
In Woman Hollering Creek Cleofilas is a mother that is abused and goes through hardships and wants to be in love. Cleofilas is obsessed with Spanish soap operas. She fantasizes about them and wants her life to be like that when she marries and moves to Texas with Juan Pedro.
What were the parting of Cleofilas father?
The idea of motherhood figures largely into the way Cleófilas survives and eventually refuses to live in the liminal borderland space. After becoming a mother, she remembers “her father’s parting words” on her wedding day as he promises his love: “I am your father, I will never abandon you” (43).
What has Cleofilas wanted since she was a little girl?
What do you learn about Cleofilas in the very first section of the story?
What do you learn about Cleófilas in the very first section of the story, which is told as a flashback? What are the contrasts between “then” and “now” that Cisneros establishes in this section? Cleófilas was raised without her mother and she had huge ideas about love and passion.
What does the creek symbolize in Woman Hollering Creek?
Originally, the word creek is in itself a symbolic word that meant a road that had not been taken by Cleofilas when she decided to staying in the relationship where she suffered physical and emotional abuse.
What is the importance of the character of Maximiliano What does Cleofilas’s perception of him tell us about her?
What is the importance of the character of Maximiliano? What does Cleófilas’s perception of him tell us about her? He is almost a reflection of her husband, Juan Pedro, but she doesn’t want to see it yet is disgusted with Maximiliano. She can not criticize her husband.
Why does Cleofilas finally decide to return to Mexico?
Cleófilas was raised without her mother and she had huge ideas about love and passion. She is now in an abusive relationship and wants to go back to Mexico as she is pretty much living in poverty in the U.S. She did not have any control in her life.
What has Cleofilas been wanting ever since she was a little girl?