Judge's Wife

“The Judge’s Wife” is set in a rustic Latin-American town that’s just large enough to have a town square, but small enough so that none of the town’s inhabitants are ignorant to the drama this story entails. Allende gives no explicit details about the town besides the fact that there is a courthouse, a bank, and a corner shop owned by a Turkish woman. Instead, she uses her adept skill of imagery to paint a picture of this town, a place that modern time has seemingly passed by. Modern time, that is, for the USA. Small, dusty, square-centered towns in today’s America are a thing of the past, preserved only in the lore of old “wild west” stories. In “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” Stephen Crane portrays just such a town which, in the end, could not hang on to its past; could not let progress pass it by. But “The Judge’s Wife” is not set in today’s America, nor is the small town a thing of the past in much of Latin America. In fact, many aspects of life in Latin America can be compared to those of the mid- to late-1800’s western United States. From the socially …show more content…
She writes in third person omniscient, with a basic chronological sequence of events. The point of view is important to truly get to know each of the main characters. To have only heard the story from Casilda’s point of view would have changed the whole impact of the story; the audience would have only seen the view of a woman who had to take some serious risks in order to protect her family on two separate occasions. To tell the story from Vidal’s eyes may have made for a more adventurous tale, but would require too much development, and would have left out the crucial decisions faced by Casilda. To have written “The Judge’s Wife” in a different style wouldn’t have altered any meaning, but the author correctly chose the sequence which allowed the story simply to be told, and to let the theme and irony be effectively