Virginity - Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Virginity plays an important role in many societies. It can represent purity, it can represent faithfulness towards your principles and in different societies it can be a very influential factor in marriage. In the novels Like Water for Chocolate and Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The authors Laura Esquivel and Gabriel Garcia Marquez respectively utilize the idea of virginity and sex to demonstrate its impact in their novels as well as to expand and highlight the themes of their novels. Virginity and more importantly the loss of virginity is a main catalyst in both books that not only stimulates the plot but also helps illuminate the main themes that are present in both novels.

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Angela Vicario's had been hiding the fact that she is not a virgin from her entire family. Her family, especially her mother places a gigantic amount of importance on maintaining her virginity. The narrator tells us that " even when it was less than two months before she would get married, Pura Vicario (Angela's mother) wouldn't let her go out alone with Bayardo San Roman (Angela's fiancé) to see the house where they were going to live, but she and her blind father accompanied her to watch over her honor" (page 37). The word honor is repeated often by Marquez in order to emphasis the importance placed on entering a marriage with your virginity in the Colombian society where the story takes place. Angela's fear of admitting her sins also highlight the value placed on virginity by her family as well as her society. Honor and pride appear and reoccur often in this novel, circling around Angela's virginity. Her fiancé discovers her deception and rejects her, throwing her back to her family and disgracing them. Her mother proceeds to beat her mercilessly for 2 hours without waking anyone in the house. By now, Angela's secret has been revealed and her punishment is fierce. Her mother interprets Angela's actions as an insult not only to her family's legacy but also to herself personally. Angela's brothers are the next people to talk to her demand her to tell them who did it "'all right girl,' he said to her, trembling with rage, 'tell us who it was'"(page 47). Their actions are completely surprising and unexpected. The normal reaction to seeing your sister beaten and crying is to care for her, and treat her well, to fix her however, Angela's brothers do none of those things. Instead they are focused solely on who took her virginity. This sparks the main plot of the novel leading the Vicario brothers to kill Santiago Nasar who Angela accused of being the one who took her virginity. The narrator never establishes whether or not Angela is telling the truth when she accuses Nasar of taking her virginity however it does not matter. What does matter is that the Vicario brothers leave and make it their goal to avenge their sister's