So Far from God

Patriarchy is embodied by men’s actionsin this community, as well as the community’s social mores. Esperanza, Fe, and Caridad are all treated poorly and rejected by their boyfriends. The unspoken rule of this community is that a woman must have a man to be complete. Fe is completely undone when Tom breaks up with her, spending an entire year screaming. She becomes completely non-functional because her relationship ends. Similarly, news of her husband’s infidelity sends Caridad on a road of heavy drinking and casual sex until the night when she is violently attacked by unknown assailants. First emotional violence is perpetrated against her, then physical violence. She and Fe spend the next year in Sofi’s house, unable to care for themselves due to the actions that men in the community take against them.

Esperanza’s reactions to the men in her life are not quite as extreme. She also is rejected by her college boyfriend but goes on to have a career. However, she gets back together with him years later and turns down a job offer just to be with him, even though he treats her like, “a casual friend whom he prayed with and whom he made love with, but whom he could not call to ask on a given day how she was doing” (39). She does eventually break up with him after tolerating his emotional manipulation.

Male dominance does not act only on specific women, but rather infiltrates the thinking of an entire community. The narrator notes of a mythical figure, “La Llorona in the beginning (before men got in the way of it all) may have been nothing short of a loving mother goddess” (163). Here, the narrator shows that this trend of female oppression and destruction applies to even the myths of these communities. This suggests that these feelings are pervasive and exist on an essential level in So Far from God.

On a larger scale, patriarchal institutions destroy women’s lives. Esperanza is a woman who becomes successful despite her circumstances—she obtains a graduate degree and works as a television journalist. However, she is sent to Saudi Arabia where “so many men and women throughout the state had been shipped off in the last months because of the imminent global crisis” (47). Esperanza goes missing and is eventually pronounced dead. No one in Esperanza’s company nor the U.S. government will give her family any answers as to her fate. Here, the novel shows how, despite personal advancement, powerful, faceless institutions still have the power to destroy women’s potential. So, too, is Fe destroyed by an institution. She devotes everything to her job at Acme International, a giant corporation. After finding happiness in her marriage to Casey, her submission to this institution dictates her subsequent death. Though these women are able to get ahead in their careers and personal lives, the world of this novel suggests that a looming institution will enforce injustice upon them.

Similarly, the institution of Catholicism has the power to thwart women’s lives on a smaller scale. While this institution does not kill women, it does advance a doctrine of shame and repression when it comes to women’s bodies. After Caridad’s first abortion, “It would have been a terrible thing to let anyone find out that La Loca had “cured” her sister of her pregnancy, a cause for excommunication for both” (27). Both would have been removed from the Church as well as scorned by the community. Caridad is still judged by the community as a “puta,” or whore (135), because of all the sex she has after her breakup. The social mores of the community mete out judgment on women. In this way, it enacts a system of control that influences women’s actions.