Angela Death Foretold Women

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Recommended: Machismo in Hispanic culture

"Any man will be happy with them because they've been raised to suffer" (Márquez 31). The culture from this novel is focused around machismo, which is the sense of masculine pride felt by most men. The men's sense of machismo has an immense impact on the women in their society. The story is set in Columbia during the 1950s, hence the lack of women's rights. A common theme throughout the story is the unprogressive view of women's rights in their patriarchal society. Angela is one of the women in the society that is chosen for marriage because of her beauty rather than her personality or intelligence. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, the author illustrates Angela and her mother's submissive behavior as a result of …show more content…

They have differing expectations for the boys as they do for the girls. From an early age, Angela is tough house skills, such as cooking and cleaning, while her brothers are not required to learn these tasks. The narrator depicts this by saying, "The brothers were brought up to be men. The girls had been reared to get married" (Márquez 31). Men were free to do as they pleased, while the sole focus of the girls' upbringing is to prepare them for marriage. To be prepared for marriage a woman in their society should posses all the skills necessary for raising a family and keeping a tidy home. Marriage is seen as a main goal for the women because they often get the opportunity to move up in social status and it shows they are worthy of a man. The men concentrate on finding the most beautiful woman to claim as their prize and to express their machismo over other men. This causes the women to feel worthless because they are only being evaluated on the physical traits they portray on the outside, rather than their knowledge or personality. If the women feel worthless it makes them less likely to stand up, resulting in men continuing to take advantage of them, which continues the vicious cycle of

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