Theme Of Gender In Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a novella about a man named Santiago Nasar, he is accused of taking Angela Vicario's virginity before marriage. Angela’s brothers then are forced to the task of killing Santiago Nasar to uphold the Vicarios family honour. The novella is based in a heavily Catholic village in Columbia. Setting influences gender norms and helps form the plot of the novella. In the novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, the author uses setting to explore gender norms in Colomiba during the mid 20th century. Marques uses the setting of Colombia to form societal beliefs of machismo and marianismo to explore gender norms. Machismo is the societal expectation that men are expected to be strong and aggressive. Pablo and Pedro Vicario were forced to killed Santiago Nasar as they had to fulfill their role of a man. They had to uphold their own personal and family honour because “‘It was matter of honour.”(49) . The “duty [had] fallen on them” (57) as they had no other option and would be ridiculed by the backwards townspeople and their whole family if they did not kill Santiago. The Vicario brothers were essentially coerced to kill Santiago, as the Colombian town expected them to be ‘men’ and kill Santiago. Additionally these gender norms that Marques develops through the setting also affect the other male characters. Santiago Nasar is the man that allegedly took Angela’s virginity, Marques portrays him as being innocent. Santiago allegedly has premarital sex with Angela but if men are allowed to have premarital sex who are they having sex with? They must be having sex with someone, the small size of the town leaves very little options. If women are condemned but men are applauded why are men even allowed to have sex in the first place, should women also be allowed to have premarital sex. Theses double standards make it very difficult for male and female characters interact outside of marriage. This means interactions that do happened have to be discrete, even though everyone gossips about it no one will see it happening. Prudencia Linero (Pablo’s wife) "knew what they were up to, and didn't only agree, [she] never would have married him if he hadn't done what a man should do" (62). Pablo Vicario’s wife, Prudencia Cotes expects Pablo to live up to society's ideal man, in fact she would have never married him in the first place if he wouldn’t have killed Santiago. Pablo had no other option but to kill Santiago to charm Prudencia, the ideal man in this society is a man that upholds his honour, even if it meant killing another man. Which

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