Ferre: Will the Real Isabel Please Stand Up?

Rosario Ferre begins When Women Love Men with “Plena de San Anton,” Spanish for the folkloric dance of a neighborhood in southern Ponce, Puerto Rico. The story that follows tells of a dance between two women and with their mutual dance partner, Ambrosio. The exploitation of women fuses the sexual identities of Isabel la Negra and Isabel Luberza to the point that it is difficult to distinguish them. As time passes and they compete for Ambrosio, the polarized Isabels adopt the rival’s identity. For example, Isabel la Negra becomes a powerful woman in Ponce and replaces Isabel Luberza in stature. Ferre shows the juxtaposition and the interdependence of the characters when she writes, “The truth is, Ambrosio, that we, Isabel Luberza and Isabel la Negra, had been leaning more and more on each other; we had purified each other of all that defiled us; and we had grown so close that we no longer knew where the lady ended and the prostitute began” (134).

1. When Ferre uses the double narrative “I,” it makes me wonder whether Isabel la Negra and Isabel Luberza are one in the same person? According to some sources, Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer is Isabel la Negra.

2. By using pronouns in the following passage, is Ferre saying the Madonna and prostitute live in every woman? “This confusion between her and her, or between her and me, or between me and me, because as time went by it became more and more difficult for us to tell this story, it grew almost impossible to distinguish between the two” (136)

Isabel la Negra gets the “taste of power” (140) while providing sexual instruction to virginal middle-class boys. Isabel believes she is helping other women by training these young boys to be better lovers. Ferre writes, “I realize then that if Isabel had been a victim of sexual exploitation, she had managed to turn that exploitation around in her favor” (150)

1. By portraying Isabel la Negra as a former prostitute who rises to become an economically powerful women in Ponce, isn’t Ferre reinforcing the sexual identity of woman as an object? Is a woman’s only means of making money through her body?

The ending of “When Women Love Men” is troubling. When the women finally meet face-to-face, their mythical features fade but what becomes vivid is the “treacherous turncoat blood” (145). Does the blood represent the end of the myth that each carries as a white women and a black woman? Does Isabel Luberza kill Isabel la Negra, or is this the final stage of the fusion of these two women?