Gender Roles In Chronicle Of A Death Foretold By Gabriel Marquez

Great Essays
The double standards of every nation influence how the outcome of a person’s everyday life plays out. It is particularly highlighted in Latin America during the twentieth-century. Gabriel Marquez, the author of many inspirational fictitious novels, was known throughout the world for his book Chronicle of a Death Foretold published in 1981. The setting of the work is seen as a portrait of corrupt, and hypocritical, Caribbean town. Within the setting of the town, the gender roles of marianismo and machismo unravel. Marianismo is derived from Virgin Mary and also known as a strong or exaggerated sense of traditional femininity, predominantly in Latin American cultures. It places a great value reference to aspects of pure, subservient, …show more content…
The first time artificial flowers were mentioned in the book was the first time Bayardo San Roman laid eyes on Angela Vicario, when she was giving details of her and her mother crossing the square with “two baskets of artificial flowers” (28). Bayardo’s first thought when he initially viewed Angela was that she was pure and innocent, equitable as the artificial flowers Angela and Pura Vicario were. Women in the Colombian culture seldom had jobs outside of their household duties. The brothers in the Vicario family are “brought up to be men” whereas women are expected to “screen embroidery, sew by machine, weave bone lace, wash and iron, make artificial flowers” and perform other feminine chores (31). Marquez’s allusion to artificial flowers corresponds to the standards of how women and men are perceived in the culture and how women are subjected to a discrete specific role in their community. As with artificial flowers, women are allegedly to never change into a living, sonorous, delicate flower. Closely linked to an artificial flower is a cloth tulip because they both resemble a fake type of flower you can buy anywhere. Subsequently, after Angela discovered that her mother was trapped in the cycle of Latin American marianismo and she was attached to Bayardo, Angela was “doing machine embroidery” and “had made cloth tulips and paper birds” (93). The cloth tulips personifies the fakeness that she is portraying in the gender roles because as a woman they are cherished for being a wife, care-taker, and an admirable mother. From the beginning to the end of the novel Marquez displays Angela’s making of artificial flowers and cloth tulips to emphasize that there will always be double standards of male and female jobs if there is no supportive change in the society as a

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