Oppression and entrapment are two different themes but the definition of both results back to the same meaning of social imprisonment. The short story “A White Woman of color” represents the theme of social imprisonment. The Columbian women who were light skinned never experienced harsh discrimination where they lived. In their country it was a known thing that lighter was better but discrimination wasn’t of the question. When her Columbian family came to Nueva York they realized that “people of color were treated as if they were inferior, prone to violence, uneducated, untrustworthy, lazy – all the “bad” adjectives we were learning in our new language.” (Álvares 4) The woman was considered a person of color because society classified them as “not white enough.” This is when she realized her culture no longer existed. She was lost, confused, separated from her culture and values. To elaborate, “My values, the loss of my catholic faith, my lifestyle, my wardrobe, my hippy ways, and my feminist ideas separate me from my native culture.” (Álvares) Social imprisonment is what she is experiencing in this situation, which is also something that a good percentage of the people in the United States experience everyday. To elaborate on that, there are patients who need the legalization of medical marijuana, they posses the same feeling of how society treated the Colombian woman in “A White Woman of color.” To elaborate on that, in the states that don’t have legal medical marijuana, there are millions of people who suffer because they don’t have the right cure for themselves and the meds that they use give life threatening long term affects. “Millions of people in the United States suffer from chronic pain, and much of that suffering cannot be relieved adequately by existing treatments. Patients are in desperate need of new pain management approaches. Cannabinoid medicines appear very promising, although the subject often is obscured by controversy, prejudice, and confusion in part because cannabinoids have some relation to the cannabis plant—also known by the slang term marijuana.”(Bill McCarberg) Some people require the cannabinoids within the plant known as marijuana in order to cure whatever disease or sickness or pain that they have. Bill McCarberg who was the founder of the Chronic Cain Management Program for Kaiser Permanente, states, “Cannabinoids found in marijuana have been shown to be effective in reducing pain.” It is truly amazing that the people who suffer from chronic pain in the United States, (100 million Americans)(Institute of Medicine of The National Academies), may not be getting the full treatment they need for their pain. Most of those 100 million Americans are experiencing social imprisonment. The government oppresses some of these parents and they are forced to take drastic measures. There are parents who move to a state where marijuana is legal because they need serious medication for their son or daughter that cannot be provided in their state. (Grant) The Columbian Woman must have felt the same way because in both situations you can say that these people have simply lost hope.
The Story written by Charlotte Perkins Gillman explains how mental entrapment can be just as worse as physical entrapment. “The treatment that the narrator dreads is neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell’s regimen of enforced bed rest, isolation, force-feeding, and massage.”(Stiles) Being diagnosed with depression and then being put in a confined room isolated and force-fed is just cruel punishment against his or her will, which results back to the theme oppression. This punishment known as the “rest cure” happened to several woman in the 19th century. This is another example of how certain groups of people need to stand up for themselves and demand freedom from the oppressor whether it be from the government, elders, etc.
“Freedom is never given up by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.”(Martin Luther King Jr.) This expresses the main theme of oppression and how it is necessary to demand freedom. Throughout the short stories there are many examples that illustrate why somebody might demand freedom. Several real situations occur where it is necessary to finally demand a freedom, such as the Americans who suffer everyday.
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