How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The brothers were brought up to be men. The girls had been reared to get married. (2.15)
There's a ton of stuff going on in these two sentences, but we'll just point out one. The way these two sentences are paired makes us expect them to be parallel sentences. In other words, we expect the second one to say, "The girls had been reared to be women." But instead, it says that they were reared to get married, implicitly stating that the entire point of a woman's life is to get married. Weddings are cool and everything, but we're pretty sure women are capable of much more awesome things than wearing fancy dresses and throwing a bouquet.
Quote #2
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 announcements. (2.15)
All of the activities described here are more or less frivolous. They all consist of making some kind of decorative item. Since Angela's mom believes that doing these things makes her daughters the perfect wives, it implies that that's all women are good for. They make decorative objects, and they probably could be considered decorative objects themselves.
Quote #3
The only thing that my mother reproached them for was the custom of combing their hair before sleeping. " Girls," she would tell them, " don' t comb your hair at night; you'll slow down seafarers." (2.15)
Those of you who are not current on your mermaid and siren mythology might have gotten a little tripped up by this quote. One myth says that sirens would sit out at night, combing their long hair and sing in order to lure sailors to their deaths.
Quote #4
Except for that, she thought there were no better-reared daughters. "They' re perfect," she was frequently heard to say. "Any man will be happy with them because they've been raised to suffer." (2.15)
Isn't Pura Vicario the best mom ever? Of course it's a good idea to teach your daughters that their entire life should be suffering. Who needs feminism?
Quote #5
Angela Vicario never forgot the horror of the night on which her parents and her older sisters with their husbands, gathered together in the parlor, imposed on her the obligation to marry a man whom she had barely seen. The twins stayed out of it. "It looked to us like woman problems," Pablo Vicario told me. (2.19)
So, yeah, all kinds of wrong here. But why do you think Pablo and Pedro assumed that these were "woman problems?" What exactly are women problems anyway? Why isn't the matter of Angela's virginity a woman problem?
Quote #6
"The only thing I prayed to God for was to give me the courage to kill myself," Angela Vicario told me. "But he didn't give it to me." (2.38)
Besides being super sad, this quote gives us an insight into exactly how this society values virginity. Based on Angela's reaction, we can tell that the culture values the virginity of a woman over her life. This might seem completely ridiculous, but can you think of any similar situations in our modern society?
Quote #7
On the other hand, the fact that Angela Vicario dared put on the veil and the orange blossoms without being a virgin would be interpreted afterwards as a profanation of the symbols of purity. (2.43)
We all know that the white wedding gown is a symbol of virginity, but you might not have known that orange blossoms have been considered symbols of fertility and purity for thousands of years.
Quote #8
While they were drinking their coffee, Prudencia Cotes came into the kitchen in all her adolescent bloom, carrying a roll of old newspapers to revive the fire in the stove. "I knew what they were up to," she told me, "and I didn't only agree, I never would have married him if he hadn't done what a man should do." (3.44)
It's easy to blame men for the culture of machismo that overwhelms this town, but they are not the only ones at fault. Prudencia Cotes shows us how this system would not be able to continue if it wasn't for the support of the women in the town as well. Why do you think she supports this culture, even though it oppresses her? What did she get out of it?
Quote #9
So Clotilde Armenta had good reason when it seemed to her that the twins weren't as resolute as before, and she served them a bottle of rotgut rum with the hope of getting them dead drunk. "That day," she told me, "I realized just how alone we women are in the world!" (3.46)
Did you notice that aside from Cristo Bedoya, the only people who actually seem to do anything about the murder of Santiago are women? Aren't they supposed to be the frailer sex? So why don't these big strong guys get involved?
Quote #10
Pura Vicario had finished drinking, dried her lips on her sleeve, and smiled at her from the bar with her new glasses. In that smile, for the first time since her birth, Angela Vicario saw her as she was: a poor woman devoted to the cult of her defects. "S***," she said to herself. (4.30)
We like to think of this moment as Angela Vicario's enlightenment. Her mom, Pura, is basically the symbol of a culture that aims to keep women in a subservient position to men. The "cult of defects" refers to the way women are watched like hawks in their society, whereas men can do whatever they want to and get no blame. But at this moment Angela decides, "screw that."