Rosario Ferre "The Youngest Doll" reflection and response.

I personally really enjoyed reading "The Youngest Doll". It was a very mystical and symbolic way of showing how women were abused for generations. I really like that Ferre didn't give her female characters voices; They never spoke in presence of other men. I feel like that showed the true hierarchy. I also can tell that the prawns were a symbol for something. Because it continuously reappears throughout the text. I thought it was cool that it eventually started to ooze out of the niece. I feel like the prawn represented a curse that befell upon women in puerto rico, whom were exploited by men, and the curse continues to eat the women alive generations later, side to side with men.

Now I can't say I fully understood the context of this short story until I read the back story of Ferre and Puerto Rico. Now it all makes sense to me. I feel like the prawns represented the economic changes that were occurring in PR in her time. And men who rode on that change and started control over everything. Women had no choice but to be taken over by the new authorities. And thus their status in society continued to stay in the same place for many generations to come. The prawns had infested their lives and procreated through their blood for decades.