Getting married and raising children is a significant part of a woman's life in the Columbian culture, with such intensity, it often becomes her life. She soon becomes nothing more than the wife of a man and the mother of children. Purisima Vicario Was a mother to many children and a faithful wife. Prior to marrying she was a schoolteacher but she had to sacrifice that part of her identity when she got married. The narrator mentions Purisima's situation, "She devoted herself with such a spirit of sacrifice to the care of her husband and the rearing of her children that at times one forgot she still existed" (Márquez 31). As a result of Purisima Vicario's fading into the background, she becomes insignificant to her society. She was forced into
