Female Influences on a Males Reputation

        Authors commonly use the names of characters to symbolize the characteristics that they should embrace in their novels. In The House of the Spirits, Allende calls one of the female characters “Blanca.” The word Blanca is derived from Latin terms meaning white. It can be inferred that Allende uses the name “Blanca” to reveal the purity and honor that this female character should represent. Allende further uses strong diction to emphasize the holiness that the female character Blanca Trueba should portray by describing her as, “a romantic, sentimental child, with a preference for solitude …, [who] was considered timid and morose,” [Allende 143]. Similarly, in Chronicle of a Death Foretold, García Márquez names one of the protagonists of her novel, “Angela Vicario.” The word “Angela” can be defined as ‘angel’. Both authors incorporate irony into their novels as the names of the characters are differing to the behavior and situations that the girls experience.

        Instead of being appreciated as equals, the female characters in both texts were often oppressed by their families. The female characters were “reared to be married, [and] raised to suffer.” [García Márquez 31] Angela Vicario, unlike her sisters, was an asset to her family. Instead of being treated as an average adult, Angela was treated as property as her family forced her into marriage; being “the youngest daughter of a family of scant resources,” Angela Vicario “had no right to disdain that prize of destiny.” [García Márquez 34]  Furthermore, García Márquez uses listing and strong diction to describe the customs that Angela’s mother, Pura Vicario, instills in her from a child, such as: “screen embroidery, sew by machine, weave bone lace, wash and iron.” [García Márquez 31] Allende also described the diverse treatment of the male and female siblings in The House of the Spirits. As a child Blanca is sent to a convent school, “a school for girls from good families which is operated by nuns.” [Allende 142] The education is a religious education which instills in young women how to be Christians and it is meant to protect and preserve the girls’ virginity until they are married.