What Is Eating Latin American Women Writers: Food, Weight, and Ea ...

Meanwhile, while face up she evoked the Aztec ruler Cuauhtémoc before his tragic death. Hence, Castellanos subtly equates the oppression of women to that suffered by indigenous people, two preoccupations that run together throughout her works.

The author also criticizes the hypocrisy of Mexican society; while it expects women to be virgins when they marry, it tolerates male infidelity. The smell of food reminds the protagonist of her husband’s transgression and once more, it reminds her of death. As her husband’s body feels like a “headstone filled with inscriptions” (14), she continues to struggle with appropriating language by wishing that he would remember her name. As for her husband’s poor opinion of her sexual abilities in bed, the intertextual connection to Sor Juana is evident: “And I, I am very clumsy. Now it is called clumsiness; before it was called innocence and you loved it” (16) evokes the nun’s well-known octosyllabic quatrain “Hombres necios” (Foolish Men) about a woman’s inability to satisfy masculine whims.

Another topic that interests Castellanos is women’s loss of identity upon marriage. In an ironic repetitive sequence of gratitude (“thank you”), the protagonist credits her husband for everything that he has “contributed” to her well-being, which in reality is nothing more than examples of her oppression: “Thank you, I murmur while wiping my lips with the tip of the napkin.…Thank you for giving me the opportunity to show off a flowing, white dress…” (12). Through the protagonist’s description and the act of eating itself, one infers the multiple and contradictory demands that society imposes upon married women: while they carry out the responsibilities of unpaid labor in their homes, they still must perform social functions. Moreover, Castellanos returns to the intricate relationship between food and women’s bodies in our society. She denounces men who appreciate a woman who “controls her weight, renews her wardrobe,