Chronicle of a Death Foretold

"The brothers were brought up to be men. The girls had been reared to be married... my mother 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.'" Page 37

I chose this quote because I identified with the very strict, traditional ways of Colombian culture. As a first generation Eritrean, I grew up around these ideals of what consitutes a man and woman, and certain things that each had to do to prove their masculinity/femininity. Although it was not as extreme, I grew up having to know how to cook, make tea/coffee, great guests, do a lot of housework, etc. because I needed to be "prepared" for when I had a family of my own. Fortunately for myself, I was able to pursue my own educational dreams and still allowed a lot of freedom in comparison to Angela and her sisters. Their lives and upbringing all revolved around the concept of them raising families and being the ideal mothers and wives to their future husbands. Their worth was determined by their abilities to do domestic work and physical beauty. Another theme that stuck out to me was that in their culture, marriage was not based on love and sentimental feelings, and women were expected to be miserable in their marriages.