In Cisneros’ work Woman Hollering Creek, amid descriptions of domestic abuse and women leading restricted and often dark lives, there is a brief passage dedicated to one senora Dolores. This woman’s house and garden hold two contrasting sets of imagery; one of death – incense, candles, altars, dead sons and husbands, and morbid flowers, but also one, though smaller, of life – tall, famous sunflowers, a kind and very sweet heart, and perhaps most importantly, a living Dolores.
Dolores holds an interesting spot in the narrative, for she is described as kind and sweet – descriptors which, alongside the familiar title and her reputation for tending her garden, likely signify she was content in life – but she lost all the men in her life. This first hint suggests that it might be precisely the lack of these men that brings Dolores peace, but one can only guess whether this is because her husband (not to mention her sons) treated her as badly as the other men in the narrative treated their wives, or if it is simply the peace of having loved something so much, and the calm of tending to this love.
A second hint in this puzzle might be the flowers, which remind me of Flanders Fields, though Dolore’s field is her garden, and the battlefield is unnamed. Two of these flowers evoke darkness, blood and suffering, and these might be those for her sons. She is truly sad to have lost them, and thus these flowers grew. On the other hand, the sunflowers are described only positively, suggesting they made good out of the grief and death, and that perhaps they grew out of the loss of her husband.
Most interesting, perhaps, is the emergence of another flower a few paragraphs down that same page: Cleofilas, upon being struck, bled “an orchid of blood”. Another flower, this one from something still living, and this one undoubtedly a sign of evil and suffering. Perhaps, considering the context presented just before, this flower shows how the men create these flowers through their actions. The strike caused the flowers appearance, and in Dolores garden, the men in her life gave birth to something new.
Hi Benjamin,
I thought your point about men in the story “[creating] these flowers through their actions” was very interesting. Regardless of whether the flowers symbolize death/morbidity or life/positivity, they are living things that are part of the cycle of life. Perhaps the creation of these flowers indicates that a cycle is being perpetuated. In the case of the “orchid of blood,” perhaps this is a suggestion that the domestic violence seen in the story has a cyclical nature in the sense that if violence is common, it may start being seen as acceptable and will therefore be perpetuated.