Character Analysis: Purisima Del Carmen

If the family and social constraints combine to exercise power over the daughter during her upbringing and in the preparations for her marriage, then they are also strong in the aftermath of Angela's rejection. It is a sign of the degree to which Purisima del Carmen has been absorbed by the structures of male domination that she becomes its active agent in the retribution visited on Angela. It is Purisima del Carmen who calls on the twins to act against Santiago Nasar and who herself undertakes the punishment of her daughter. In both these acts Purisima del Carmen is the agent for the habitual actions and values of a certain social order: typically of older women in Latin American societies, the mother is the teacher and controller of the

They suggest a social ground against which particular events take place. Now the rigidities and apparent efficiency of that power structure cannot eliminate challenges and difficulties. But, it is important to set in place and describe the class divisions at work in the novel. The sexual division and hierarchy cut across the division into social class. In Garcia Marquez, class is not explicitly emphasised, but the novel does contain certain suggestive indicators of

Certain male characters doubt if the Vicario twins would be daring enough to urder Santiago Nasar because he comes from a rich family. Santiago's preferred activities and the size of his income confirms his status as a bourgeois. He knows how to use guns, he likes horses and training birds of prey, he is the owner of a cattle farm, and his family own a large house with a number of servants. The San Romans are placed at or above the same level as the Nasar. The family is powerful at a national level due to the position and wealth of the head of the family, the General. The power brought by the position is obvious when Bayardo is asked bythe Vicario family to prove his claim to be a respectable suitor for Angela. By producing his whole family, Bayardo immediately makes it clear that “….he was going to marry whomever he chose” (Chronicle, 33). The ‘free will’ of the son is achieved through his relation to his father- again, male solidarity is the vehicle to perpetuate their power. And such is the power of the son that he can freely take the initiative in any way he wants. Bayardo does not baulk at the difficulty of buying the house which Angela most like in the town: he simply offers the owner, Xius, such exorbitant sum of money for it that no sane man can refuse to accept. Similarly, he seems