Class Inequality and Privilege in Of Women and Salt: A Thematic Analysis

The Thematic Claim: Privilege as Invisible Architecture, Precarity as Constant Labor

In Of Women and Salt, class inequality and privilege form a system of unearned advantage that determines who moves freely, who must perform for survival, and whose dignity is presumed rather than earned. The novel's critique is double-edged: privilege is often invisible to those who hold it, while those without it must constantly adapt, perform, and sacrifice. Gabriela Garcia traces this dynamic across three centuries and three countries—colonial Cuba, contemporary Mexico, and Miami—showing that the mechanisms of class hierarchy persist even as their forms change. The thematic claim is not simply that the rich exploit the poor, but that even well-meaning privilege imposes its own demands, and that those who lack privilege must calculate every choice around survival rather than desire.

Privilege Named but Unseen: Ana in Irapuato

Chapter 7, titled Privilegio, stages the theme most explicitly. Ana, a Salvadoran girl living in Mexico after deportation, works alongside her mother Gloria as a domestic for Doña Nancy, a US-born woman who teaches English at a private middle school. Nancy lectures Ana about the word privilegio, explaining that her husband Roberto has so much of it, while remaining oblivious to her own position as the employer who dictates the terms of Gloria and Ana's lives. The chapter's title is ironic: Nancy can name the concept but cannot see herself within it.

The chapter is built on a series of inversions. Ana knows Nancy better than Nancy's own husband does—she knows about the cigarettes hidden in the wardrobe, the affair with the Spanish teacher, the cash stashed beneath a floorboard. This knowledge is a form of labor: Ana must listen for the bathroom faucet so she can be ready with the mop. The intimacy of domestic work gives Ana access to Nancy's secrets, but that access confers no power. Knowing everything about Nancy's life does not change the fact that Ana's own life is contingent on Nancy's goodwill.

The eating scene is particularly telling. On their first day, Gloria served food in a separate room, but Nancy insisted they eat together. Ana wishes they could return to the separate room so she could stop performing. Nancy's gesture of inclusion—framed as progressive kindness—actually creates new labor for Ana, who must perform gratitude and comfort while Roberto glares. The scene dramatizes how well-meaning privilege can impose its own demands, converting even a meal into an occasion for the subordinate to manage the emotions of the powerful.

Ana's desire to be Nancy is also revealing. She wants a not-of-hereness that evokes curiosity and interest, the way Nancy's bad Spanish is met with amusement and kindness at the market. This is a precise observation about how nationality and class shape reception: Nancy's foreignness is charming; Gloria's is threatening. The same difference that marks Nancy as an exotic expat marks Gloria and Ana as outsiders to be resented. Ana's wish to grow up faster so she could set her mother free shows how class aspiration is bound up with care for others.

The Limits of Charity: Gloria's Illness

The novel tests the limits of Nancy's benevolence when Gloria falls ill. Nancy pays for a doctor to see Gloria even though she has no papers, but makes clear she cannot pay long-term. The doctor asks whether the patrona would pay for chemo, and the answer is no. Ana walks her mother down a hospital hallway holding an oxygen tank, then helps her onto a bus because Nancy is working. The scene is devastating precisely because Nancy is not a villain—she is a woman who has done more than most employers would, and still the structure of the relationship means Gloria's life is worth only a single consultation.

The hidden money under the floorboard becomes a moral test. Ana knows it is there. Years later, Nancy leaves Mexico in a rage after discovering Roberto's affair, abandoning the cash without remembering it. But Ana does not take it—not because she does not want to save her mother, but because she fears what would happen if Nancy found out. Where would they go? The scene shows how precarity disciplines even the possibility of resistance. Ana's calculation is not about morality but about survival. The money that could have bought her mother more time is also the money that could cost them their home, their job, their only foothold.

Race and Class in Cuba: Jeanette's Visit

Chapter 9 shifts to Jeanette's visit to Cuba in 2015, where class and race intersect in ways that complicate the novel's critique. Jeanette's grandmother, an elderly revolutionary, immediately assumes that a Black neighbor named Yosmany stole her rare copy of Les Misérables. In fact, Jeanette herself took the book. The grandmother's racism commingles with her revolutionary fervor: she declares that Black men cannot be trusted, and later invokes a proverb about people who steal on the way in or the way out.

Jeanette observes that racism in Miami is just slightly more polite, a little quieter. She notes that in Miami, Cuban is synonymous with white—that Cubans will insist they are not Latino but Cuban, meaning they are another kind of white. This observation connects the class hierarchies of Cuba and Miami, showing that the same families carry racial and class prejudice across borders. Jeanette's own mother, who fled Cuba for freedom, chastises her daughter for shoplifting with a speech about Cuban scarcity—the mopping-rag steak, the vanished cats—insisting she came to freedom so Jeanette would never have to steal. The irony is that Jeanette's theft is itself a response to the consumer abundance her mother sought.

The book itself is a class marker. Jeanette's grandmother knows it is a rare book worth money—an original Spanish printing of Les Misérables. Jeanette is surprised that Cubans would have an interest in rare collections, a moment of her own class-based assumption. The book's journey—from 1866 Cuba to present-day Miami—becomes a symbol of how stories and objects carry class meaning across generations.

Historical Roots: María Isabel in 1866 Cuba

The novel's earliest timeline grounds the theme in colonial history. María Isabel works as the only female cigar roller in a Camagüey workshop, where the lector Antonio reads newspapers and novels aloud. When fighting reaches Camagüey, the workshop shrinks and the owner censors Antonio's readings. Spanish soldiers eventually execute Antonio for holding secret reading sessions in a sugarcane field.

The sugarcane field is a loaded symbol—the site of enslaved labor and, later, of forbidden literacy. Antonio's crime is not political organizing but reading. The novel links the denial of literacy to the denial of dignity, showing how class hierarchies are maintained through control of knowledge. María Isabel's position as a woman in a male-dominated trade, and as a worker subject to the owner's whims, anticipates the precarity that Gloria and Ana face centuries later. The book that Antonio gives María Isabel—the same Les Misérables that will surface in Jeanette's grandmother's house and eventually in Ana's hands in Miami—connects these women across time.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel refuses a simple moral hierarchy. Nancy is genuinely kind in some ways—she buys Ana gifts, takes her for strawberries, argues for the family to eat together. But her kindness is also self-congratulatory and conditional. She lectures Ana about privilege while being unable to see her own. The novel suggests that privilege is not merely a matter of bad intentions; it is a structure that shapes even well-meaning people.

Similarly, Jeanette's grandmother is both a victim of scarcity and a perpetrator of racism. Her revolutionary politics coexist with prejudice against Black Cubans. Jeanette herself is a thief and a recovering addict who lets Yosmany be blamed for her theft. The novel refuses to let any character be purely virtuous or purely villainous.

The Les Misérables book embodies this complexity. It is a symbol of class privilege—a rare, valuable object that Jeanette's grandmother hid in a wall for years. But it is also a symbol of resistance—the book that Antonio read aloud in the sugarcane field, the book that carries the inscription We are force. By the end, it reaches Ana in Miami, inscribed with the words that give the novel its quiet thesis: we are more than we think we are. The book's journey suggests that stories can transcend the class hierarchies that produce them.

Study Questions

1. How does Chapter 7, titled Privilegio, dramatize the gap between naming privilege and understanding it?

Nancy uses the word privilegio to describe her husband Roberto's attitudes, but she cannot see her own privilege as the employer who controls Gloria and Ana's housing, income, and even their access to medical care. The chapter shows that naming a concept is not the same as understanding it—Nancy's vocabulary of critique coexists with her inability to recognize the power she holds over the people who work in her home.

1. In Chapter 9, how does Jeanette's grandmother's accusation against Yosmany reveal the intersection of class and race prejudice? How does Jeanette's own theft complicate the scene?

The grandmother assumes Yosmany stole the book because he is Black, and her racism coexists with her revolutionary politics. Jeanette's theft complicates the scene because she is the actual thief—a visitor from Miami who takes the book and lets an innocent man be blamed. The scene shows that prejudice and theft are not confined to any one class or political position.

1. Trace the journey of the Les Misérables book across the novel. How does it function as both a marker of class privilege and a symbol of resistance?

The book first appears in 1866 Cuba, where Antonio reads it aloud to workers in the cigar workshop and later in secret sessions in the sugarcane field. It is a rare, valuable object—Jeanette's grandmother hid it in a wall for years and knows it is worth money. But it is also a symbol of forbidden literacy and resistance. By the end, it reaches Ana in Miami, inscribed with a message of self-worth, suggesting that the stories within it can empower those who have been denied dignity.

1. Compare María Isabel's position as a cigar roller in 1866 Cuba with Gloria's position as a maid in Mexico. How does each woman's access to dignity and safety depend on class and nationality?

María Isabel's dignity depends on the workshop owner's tolerance of Antonio's readings, which can be revoked at any moment—and ultimately is, with fatal consequences. Gloria's dignity depends on Nancy's goodwill, which is genuine but limited: Nancy pays for one doctor visit but not chemo, and Gloria must perform humility at the dinner table. Both women are subject to the whims of those who control their labor, and both face violence—physical in María Isabel's case, structural in Gloria's—when they are deemed to have overstepped.

1. The novel shows Nancy paying for one doctor visit but refusing long-term chemo payment. What does this reveal about the limits of charitable privilege, and how does Ana's decision not to take the hidden money complicate the moral picture?

Nancy's single payment reveals that charitable privilege is discretionary—it can be extended or withdrawn without accountability. The doctor's question about whether the patrona would pay for chemo makes explicit that Gloria's life is contingent on her employer's generosity. Ana's decision not to take the hidden money complicates the picture because she is not choosing between right and wrong but between two risks: taking the money might save her mother but cost them their home and job. Her calculation is about survival, not morality, and the novel refuses to judge her either way.