The Eternal Feminine

From the play The Eternal Feminine, written by Rosario Castellanos, the scene that stuck out to me most was presented in Act Three. During the third act Lupita trys on different wigs with different labels. Each time Lupita puts on a wig she imagines herself becoming the person the wig portrays. When Lupita trys on the wig “At the Edge of the Storm” starts the scene that I believe is most interesting. This scene starts on page 349.

When Lupita puts on this wig she becomes the leader of a small female bourgeoisie student discussion group. I thought is was interesting how the author chose the actual play "The Eternal Feminine" as the main center point of hte discussion. I believe Castellanos did this to almost foreshadow that her play would become a topic of discussion among people after it was published. She was aware of the controversy it could unfold from her views even if the discussers hadn't even seen or read the play. It's almost if she is using this scene to prepare herself for possible backlash. To prove my point, an example of this can be found later on from a student who in fact admits to not seeing the play. Lupita: “Have you seen The Eternal Feminine?” Lady IV: “I don’t need to go to the theater to assimilate ideas- like some of my friends- or to think. I think on my own.” Lupita: “And you think the worst.” Lady IV: “Than as the proverb says, I get it right…”

The women even begin to delve into what sort of action they will take against the play Castellanos created. A suggestion is thrown out “to fight to be given the right to vote” but Lupita counteracts that by saying “We Mexican women have had the right to vote since January 18, 1946” in response a shocked sounding lady replies: “How come we never…” This is an important point because it shows that although women have at the right, they have a tendency to not use it. If you have the power to make a change, why didn't they do it? The discussion continues with a lady pointing out “with or without the vote, Mexican women continue being oppressed” and then another women says “by girdles and by bras- terribly oppressed.” This scene points out that although women were beginning to recognize that they need to change their current state of treatment, they just weren't exactly dead on about why they were supressed. This misconstrued notion that material items were the things that were keeping them supressed is way off. With them not recognizing that it was in fact their traditions that were keeping them from regaining respect, they were unable to find a plausable way to fix their current problem of supression.

Lupita takes it upon herself to create a list of changes for the women once they decide it is finally time to take action for themselves “these are various options. First defend traditions, modernizing them, of course, in order to up-date them.” The key part of the scenes is when they lady speaks up, “The third way has to reach the heart of the problem. It’s not enough to adapt to a society that changes superficially, while its roots remain the same. It’s not good enough to imitate the models proposed for us that are answers to circumstances other than our own. It isn’t even enough to discover who we are. We have to invent ourselves.” After that was state the women go literally crazy! Some start praying, some begin to rip off their bras, and others begin to cry out for random wants. This scene is a some what exaggerated example, and it could be a bit truthful, of when something you have believed in for so long is labeled as wrong, you don't know what to do. You don't know if you should rebel, freak-out, or continue to live in denial. It was probably extremely hard for women in the early 1900s to overcome their stereotype. The idea of the woman being only a figure of the home was something extremely hard to overcome, it's easy to see that women probably freaked out about when they discovered that times were changing. Change is scary.

In the end, Castellanos created her work in order to make women think. She wanted them to question their current conditions and wonder what if? Although some women decided that change wasn't for them, her play probably sparked an idea in others to question their lifestyles. Without forewarding thinking people such as Castellos, the women's movement would have never taken off.