Gender Roles In Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

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Both Men and Women uphold strict gender roles that they are expected to stick to in Gabriel Garcia Marquez 's Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Men and women are both held to different standards, thus causing a double standard to occur. It is the men 's responsibility to maintain their family 's honor, no matter what they have to do. In the story, the Vicario brothers get away with the murder of Santiago Nasar just because they were defending the honor of their family. While one of the main roles of the females, is to stay pure until marriage even though men do not have to. Santiago Nasar allegedly deflowered Pedro and Pablo Vicario 's sister, Angela Vicario. This is the reason why The Vicario brothers did not like Santiago and later ended up …show more content…
What is expected of girls is to stay clean and pure to until marriage. During the 1950 's it was understood that women would be raised with the understanding that they have to get married as soon as possible. The book even states, "The brothers were brought up to be men. The girls had been reared to get married" (Marquez 31). Instead of also stating that girls were brought up to be women, the novel suggests that a girl 's main purpose is to grow up and get married. People in the town did not think that women were capable of doing anything else besides tying the knot. Typically that is all that women were ever taught to do, though, because that has always been their family 's main focus for them. Women were expected to learn household skills that will be useful to them once they got married while men were taught the importance of being a man. For example "They knew how to do screen embroidery, sew by machine, weave bone lace, wash and iron, make artificial flowers and fancy candy, and write engagement" (Marquez 31). Since it is traditional for women to stay pure and clean before marriage, this is one of the main reasons that Santiago was murdered. During Angela Vicario 's wedding night, it is unveiled to her newly wedded husband, Bayardo San Roman, that she is not a virgin. Angela 's husband did not like the idea of that at all and because of that returns her to her family the same night. When asked whom …show more content…
Women during the 1950 's would get married more than not against their will. While gaining the necessary etiquette that accompanies becoming a wife, that does not mean they were emotionally prepared. In Carol Warren 's book The Oral History Review she makes the claim that some women are not emotionally stable that were married young in the 1950 's. She conducted interviews with women that were married during that time period and makes connections between gender-stereotypical behavior and the institutionalization. Her book reads "It is interpreted that the women 's illness as an inability to adjust properly to female adulthood, which they clearly saw as a less-demanding adulthood than that achieved by their breadwinning husbands" (Warren 114). This factor played a vital role in Chronicle of a Death Foretold as women were just thrown into marriage. Most of the time when women married men it was only because of their social class as well as their wealth. Pura Vicario, Angela 's mom, even told Angela "love can be learned too" (Marquez 35). Angela 's mother is reassuring her that even though she might not love Bayardo San Roman, she should go ahead and marry him. She could learn to love him eventually, genuinely with little regard to his money. If Angela had not been forced by her family to marry someone she was not in love with, then it would have never been discovered that she was

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