Kiss by Julia Alvarez Julia

¶ … Kiss by Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez's 1991 short story The Kiss, illustrates several important themes: (1) the manner in which male chauvinism masquerading under the concept of "traditional values" undermines the autonomy of women; (2) the way that inappropriately enmeshed and controlling parents cause long-term harm to the quality of their family relationships; and (3) the phenomenon by which excessively strict focus on forced values and negative expectations in relation to those values succeeds only in inspiring those very same negative behaviors.

Male Chauvinism and Interference with Female Autonomy

The patriarch of this Dominican-American family is a chauvinistic character who has allowed hi family life to be dominated and affected adversely by his unquestioned adherence to so-called "traditional" values defining the social roles of women and their dependence on and inferiority to males. He regularly attempts to undermine the intimacy between his daughters and their respective husbands by excluding the men from an important family gathering and by distributing money to his daughters as though it is inconceivable that their husbands could possibly be supporting them adequately or fully providing for all of their financial needs.

Carlos is a man who openly admits having had grave fears that his daughters would fail to produce a male sire capable of continuing his family name. He is oblivious to the hurtful messages he send to his granddaughter and the manner in which he is adversely affecting her self-image and her ambition in the way he exclaims his pride over the world of potential that is available to young Carlos, necessarily implying that those opportunities will never be available to his granddaughter.

Inappropriately Enmeshed Parents and Harm to Family Relationships

Whereas healthy parenthood manifests a clear understanding that the ultimate goal of parents is to prepare their children to leave the nest permanently, Carlos insists on retaining hold of his daughters as much as he can. His annual birthday party is a reflection of his refusal, on a psychological level, to accept that each of his daughters is now part of another man's family and that their marriages are now the primary relationships in their lives, as they should be. Carlos had no respect as a father for the right to privacy of his daughters and unapologetically searched her private drawers for her personal correspondence, which he then proceeded to read and chastise her for their contents. This is a profound boundary violation that is never justified except perhaps in connection with life-threatening addiction or other similarly self-destructive behavior. It is certainly inappropriate as a reflection of chauvinistic doctrine, particularly when it concerns a child who is already an adult.

The Phenomenon of Inspiration by Negative Expectations

By referring to his daughters pejoratively as his "harem" in connection with his fears about their failure to produce a male grandson, he also reveals his incestuous psychological refusal to acknowledge that, as adult women, they are perfectly within their rights to pursue sexual relations with men. In that respect, he could just have easily referred to a family of all female daughters as his "sorority" rather than his "harem" and there is probably a psychological relevance to his choice of the more sexualized term. Like many men of his generation, especially within highly chauvinistic cultures, Carlos has lived his entire life profoundly threatened by the prospect of his daughters' sexuality. Instead of accepting that adult women have the same right, particularly in contemporary American society, to express their sexuality in any manner they wish, he is tormented by the thought that any of his daughters might ever enjoy a sexual relationship outside of the strict boundaries of a traditional marriage.