February 26, 2013
Honors English II
The Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez displays numerous elements that through careful analysis can reveal the society in which the characters live and shed some light on the character of the puzzling Santiago Nasar. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the author Gabriel García Márquez suggests that women can overcome Columbian’s double standards as shown through double standard itself, a woman regaining innocence, and a woman over coming with dignity.
Columbian women have to go by a double standard rule that states that women can not loose their virginity before marriage; whereas men can have as much premarital sex as they want. In the novel, character, Angela Vicario is disgraced and ridiculed by society for not being a virgin prior to marriage. The narrator states, “Mistress of her fate for the first time, Angela Vicario then discovered that hate and love are reciprocal passions.” Angela is realizing what she had done and how it has effective everyone’s life. “Fatality makes us invisible” “No one would have though, nor did anyone say, that Angela Vicario wasn’t a virgin.”
Regaining innocence is hard for Columbian woman if the law of double standard is broken. The only way a woman or women can regain their innocence is if they practice celibacy. However, a cruel way for a woman to gain her innocence in the eye of the law is to cry rape like Angela did. She accused of Santiago of forcing himself on to her and taking her virginity. Her relatives, the Vicario brothers (Pedro and Pablo) killed Santiago for rapping Angela. After finding out about the death of Santiago she felt extremely guilty because she had lied about the rape to her family. The author wrote, ”She was so distressed that she had resolved to tell her mother the truth so as to free herself from that martyrdom, when her only two confidantes, who worked with her making cloth flowers, dissuaded her from her good intentions”.
Columbian women do not have any say so in things. Angela selfishly overcame her dignity by setting up an innocent man that she claim took her took her virginity and which she also claimed that Santiago was guilty. Pedro and Pablo kill Santiago because of her actions. Her accusations caused the downfall of Santiago. Bayardo had become victimized by her because he married her with the illusion that she is a virgin. In the end, she fail back in love with Bayardo and got what she wanted while also resolving a psychological conflict and breaking free of the community's chains that are put on women.
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