Gabriel Garcia Marquez creates a magical world in his novel of eighteenth century South America, Of Love and Other Demons. The central character in this world is Sierva Maria a twelve-year-old girl, daughter to a Marquis, but raised in the world of slaves. Her copper hair has never been cut and she [can] dance with more grace and fire than the Africans, sing in voices different than her own in the various languages of AfricaHer movements [are] so stealthy that she [seems] an invisible creature (12). She is intelligent but refuses to learn to read and write until the man she loves teaches her. Essentially, she is not of this world (44). She is a wild creature caught between many worlds; of childhood and womanhood, of white and black, of royalty and peasantry; even her name is caught up in the debate, the name of her birth: Sierva Maria, and the name of her life: Maria Mandinga. She is a passionate, life-imbued girl living in a world of decay: her father is a funereal, effeminate man, as pale as a lily because the bats [drain] his blood while he [sleeps] (9). Her mother, a former beauty, has become as bloated and coppery as a three-day-old corpse (8-9). The house they live in was once the pride of the city[and] now it [is] a melancholy ruin (10). Only the slaves living in the courtyard show her life and accept and love her as their own.
Because she is a creature that does not seem to fit into the world of eighteenth century South America, she eventually cannot survive in it, and thus she dies, unable to ever find an acceptable place. At home the slaves love her; she is happy living in their world until a rabid dog bites her during an excursion through the slums of Getsemani. This bite, at first neglected by Sierva Marias parents, is finally cause for concern when her mother, Bernarda Cabrera, hears about the other people bitten by the same dog falling ill to rabies and concludes that a simple dog bite might damage the familys honor (13). However, nothing is done until her father learns of the bite months later. He quickly summons doctors to examine Sierva Maria and they force her to endure a multitude of treatments for her rabies, all of which only make her sick and bring her to the brink of death (50). Eventually the bishop hears of Sierva Marias vicissitudes and ravings and demands she be put into the churchs care to undergo an exorcism (51). She is placed in the Convent of Santa Clara where she eventually dies.
Taken away from the only people who have ever shown her kindness, Sierva Maria is thrust into the care of an ignorant and cruel abbess who has her tied onto a mattress in a small cell and leaves her covered in her own filth. Her freedom is taken away. She is neglected until Father Cayetano Delaura, the priest in charge of her exorcism, comes to determine whether she is truly possessed. He is quickly enamored with the innocent and beguiling Sierva Maria, and immediately takes her care to a personal level. He becomes obsessed with proving her innocent of possession to the point of destroying his own career with the church. The only other person in the convent who treats Sierva Maria with any kindness is Martina Laborde, a nun-turned-murderer, who is in the cell next to Sierva Marias. Martina teaches Sierva Maria how to embroider and obtains permission for them to watch the total eclipse of the sun together (86). Because of these kindnesses, Sierva Maria is able to endure the cruelties of everyone else. She thrives on their love and kind attention; they give her hope for a future and strength for the present.
However, even before he meets her, Delaura has a significant dream about her displaying her love of life and self-destructive nature:
Sierva Maria sat at a window overlooking a snow-covered field, eating grapes one by one from a cluster she held in her lap. Each grape she pulled off grew back again on the clusterIt was evident the girl had spent many years at that infinite window trying to finish the cluster, and was in no hurry to do so because she knew that in the last grape lat death (75).
Sierva Maria is in no hurry to finish the grapes because she is enjoying her life, living it as she wants to. The main concept is that she is living it, eating the grapes is living life, finishing the grapes is death, hence she is living her life knowing that as she does so she is bringing about her own death. Her cause of death is her own will. She later has the same dream, and the night of her death, the grape-bunch vision is again brought into play. Although, in this final dream, Sierva Maria [pulls the grapes] off not one by one but two by two, hardly breathing in her longing to strip the cluster of its last grape (147). She has lost everything at this point even her will to endure anymore (147). Her family, freedom, Martina, her archangel of salvation Father Aquino, her love Delaura, and her hair have all been taken from her, she is left alone, vulnerable, and desolate which is more than she can bear so she chooses to die (132). Sierva Maria held onto her life as long as she had love and support around her. However, her otherworldliness, the traits that drew some and repelled others, is marked by her inability to remain in this world on her own. With no acceptance at all, she has no where to turn to for comfort, her endurance gives her an age beyond her twelve tears, but her longing and need for loving nourishment clearly shows her as the child she is. She dies because she is a young girl whose only joys are taken away from her while she is made to bear cruelties beyond her capabilities. She loses her desire to live because her happiness is taken away, leaving with nothing to live for.
Work Cited
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Of Love and Other Demons. New York: Knopf, 1995. Print.
Already have an account? Log In Now
7348