Manzo 1

Samantha Manzo
English 362
October 20, 2014
Professor Sears
The Women of One Hundred Years of Solitude
In the magical realist novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Mrquez,
there is a clear objectification of women. There is a distinction of women in this novel; women
who stay home and avoid their desires and women who try and live out their desires, but each of
the groups of women get objectified in different ways. (Roses 68) The women who stay home
are considered uptight and the men seem to walk all over them while most of the women who
live out their desires are seen as whores. Although the women seem to be put in these
categories, and are all objectified anyway, the women of One Hundred Years of Solitude are
actually very important characters throughout the novel, and we can see this through the
characters Ursula Iguaran, Fernanda, Pilar Ternera, and Petra Cotes.
Ursula Iguaran is a very important characters in the novel. She is in the most pages
throughout the text, and is the woman who started the Buendia family. From the very beginning
chapters we see the objectification of Ursula and how she takes on the women roles. The very
first time Ursula has sex, she is forced into it by her husband. He threatens her and forces himself
upon her. From then on, she and her husband continue to have sex and end up having three
children, almost as if the actions of her husband were Okayed. Then we see her husband ignore
her, and go after his dreams of becoming an inventor and finding gold while she is stuck at
home, trying to raise a family. Even through her husbands unsuccessfulness she sticks by his
side and even allows him to melt her inheritance. From then on all the men of the Buendia

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family, treat Ursula in awful ways. Her sons come and go when they please, taking her money
and acting as if they own the house when they come home. In the text it reads, Ursula gave in,
as always, to her husbands unyielding obstinacy (Mrquez 7). It could be argued that through
Ursula always giving in to her husband, she passes on to her daughters that it is okay to be
objectified by men.
Although we see this clear objectification of Ursula, she is actually a very important
character to the novel. In the very beginning when her husband wanted to see the gypsies, Ursula
talks the town into not liking them. When the gypsies came back, Ursula had turned the whole
population of the village against them (Mrquez 7). This shows that she in fact does have
control over the Macondo community. Also, although Ursula allows her husband to ignore
herself and her sons while he is obsessed over the laboratory, Allan-Hodges says that it is
because of this reason; Ursulas willingness to allow her husband to have a sense of freedom in
the laboratory allows her to quietly maintain her sense of control and placate her husband so that
she might do as she wishes (Allan-Hodges 15). She lets her husband be in the laboratory so that
she can control the household. Ursula is also the one that creates the candy making business in
order to help build her familys resources. (Allan-Hodges 8) When her family was in need, she
created a very successful candy business that helped out with the finances. She is also one of the
only characters that notice that their family history is repeating, and is worried about it. The text
reads, When she said it she realized that she was giving the same reply that Colonel Aureliano
Buendia had given in his death cell, and once again she shuddered with the evidence that time
was not passing, as she had just admitted, but that it was turning in a circle (Mrquez 335).
Another very important role Ursula has in the novel is her ability to see the unseen. When she
becomes blind, something that usually hinders most, she uses it to her advantage and is able to

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notice more than she has ever had. For example, she notices that the people in her family take the
same steps every day and do the same routine. The book reads, Quite simply, while the others
were going carelessly all about, she watched them with her four senses so that they never took
her by surprise and after some time she discovered that every member of the family, without
realizing it, repeated the same path every day, the same actions, and almost repeated the same
words at the same hour (Mrquez 247). Ursula is objectified in the novel, but has a very
important role in the novel for being this mother figure to all of Macondo and being able to
notice what others cannot.
Pilar Ternera can be seen as the direct opposite character of Ursula, but she is still
objectified throughout the text. Unlike Ursulas objectification by having the mother role,
Pilars objectification is seen through sex. The very reason she came to Macondo was because
her parents wanted to get her away from the man that raped her when she was fourteen. The book
reads, She had been part of the exodus that ended with the founding of Macondo, dragged along
by her family in order to separate her from the man who raped her at fourteen and had continued
to love her until she was twenty-two, but who never made up his mind to make the situation
public because he was a man apart (Mrquez 28). She even tried waiting for the man that raped
her. Then, while in Macondo, she sleeps with a lot of men only refusing one, her son. When she
refuses him, he says to her, Dont pretend to be a saint. The whole world knows that you are a
whore (Mrquez 104). After this Pilar spends her life savings to buy her son a virgin so that he
can sleep with her, and fall in love with her instead of herself. So, Pilar also takes place in
objectifying women by buying their virginity, giving rooms so men can have sex with women,
and at the end running a brothel. Pilar Ternera is objectified throughout the novel through sex.
She herself is objectified because she is known as a whore for sleeping around and sleeps with

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most of the men whom fancy her and she objectifies women through sex as well. Her character
reinforces the notion of women as the natural servant of male appetites. (Deveny 87)
Just like Ursula, although Pilar is extremely objectified throughout One Hundred Years of
Solitude, her role is extremely important throughout the text. For starters, her character lives to
be the oldest female character in the book. She also does not die until the last chapter of the
novel. (Deveny 86) Pilar does have sex with the two of the Buendia men that lust after her, but it
is on her own terrain. (Roses 70) It is on her terms and when she wants it. She is also the first
women to give birth to a Buendia child. Pilar also has the special power of reading the future and
it is during the insomnia plague that she learned to read the past through her cards to help
Macondo remember. Pilar Ternera was the one who contributed most to popularize that
mystification when she conceived the trick of reading the past in cards as she had read the future
before (Mrquez 47). The women and men in One Hundred Years of Solitude continue to go to
Pilar through times of crisis so she can help them, and read their futures (Roses 70). Roses also
says, At the interruption of the repeated cycling of time, Pilar remains the clairvoyant, the
counselor, the first chain of characters who procreate with and comfort the Buendia males,
sustain them, and act to enable the decoding of the revelatory manuscripts. Pilars fundamental
and pivotal functions reveal that her character, far from being incidental, is necessary to the
novel. (Roses 71) Pilar is objectified through sex and is seen as a negative character but she is
actually arguably one of the most important characters in the text.
Another character in the novel, who is similar to Ursula and objectified in similar ways,
is Fernanda. In Fernandas home town she is seen as royalty. She is different, the nuns would
explain. She is going to be a queen. Her schoolmates believed this because she was already the
most beautiful, distinguished, and discreet girl they had ever seen (Mrquez 206). Although she

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is not really a queen, she is treated like one. When one of the Buendia men go to her home town
to ask for her hand in marriage, her parents say yes with no hesitation, and she is forced to leave
her family and go to Macondo. She takes on this mother role, and all the negative side effects
that come with it. Her husband also starts to cheat on her with Petra Cotes. Her husband comes
and goes as he pleases, and at one point he barely ate at home and the only appearances he put
in, such as to sleep with his wife, were not enough to convince anyone.Fernanda, contrary to
expectations, did not reproach him in the least or give the slightest set of resentment, but on the
same day she sent two trunks with his clothing to the house of his concubine (Mrquez 253).
She did try and stop it by sending his clothes to Petras house in daylight to try and embarrass
him, but it does not work. She does this to try and shame her husband, but instead he throws a
party of his new freedom. So, she just gives into her husband having a mistress. Fernanda is
objectified throughout the text through her mother role.
Even though Fernanda is objectified in many ways throughout the novel, her character
also is important to the One Hundred Years of Solitude. Even though she is not from Macondo
she is still a major character in the text. Fernanda takes leadership of the household away from
the ill Ursula and by setting rules, and telling people what to do. As long as Ursula had full
use of her facilities some of the old customs survived and the life of the family kept some quality
of her impulsiveness, but when she lost her sight and the weight of her years relegated her to a
corner, the circle of rigidity begun by Fernanda from the moment she arrived finally closed
completely and no one but she determined the destiny of the family (Mrquez 211). Fernanda
took on Ursulas roles and it is she who ends up determining the fate of the family. Even though
the Buendia family all make fun of Fernanda, none of them ever try and rebel against her and
they let her take charge of the house. She also takes matters into her own hands when it comes to

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her daughters lover, and tells a watcher of the house that someone was going to break in and has
him shoot her daughters lover to death. At the end of her days, she isolates her grandson and he
becomes sort of a servant to her. With time he was the one who took over the kitchen duties.
Fernanda would find her breakfast ready when she arose and she would leave her room again
only to get the meal that Aureliano had left covered on the embers for her (Mrquez 360)
Fernanda takes on the responsibility of keeping the household together, and because of this she is
a very important character for keeping the Buendias together and determining their fate.
Petra Cotes character is very similar to Pilar and gets objectified in a similar way, through
her sexualization. She is first introduced when she starts to have sex with one of the Buendia
men after the death of her husband. She then meets his twin brother and thinks that they are the
same man and starts to sleep with him as well. At the end of two weeks, Aureliano Segundo
realized that the women had been going to bed alternately with him and his brother, thinking that
they were the same man, and instead of making things clear, he arranged to prolong the
situation (Mrquez 187). Instead of doing the right thing, and telling Petra Cotes, he uses her as
an object so he can continue to sleep with her. Eventually, the one brother, also using her for sex,
decides to leave her while the other brother asks to stay. Then the brother, who stays, runs off and
gets married to Fernanda behind Petra Cotess back. Just as she foreseen, Aureliano Segundo
went back to her house as soon as the honeymoon was overshe understood she was going to
need more patience than she had foreseen because he had seemed ready to sacrifice for the sake
of appearances. Nor did she get upset at the time (Mrquez 204-205). While in his marriage, he
continues to have sex with Petra and even goes to live there for a while, and Petra is fine with the
fact that the love of her life has a wife. She lets her lover go back and forth between her and his
wife. He also seems to switch the roles of his women in one part of the novel. He continued

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living at Petra Cotess but he would visit Fernanda every day and sometimes he would stay to eat
with the family, as if fate had reversed the situation and had made him the husband of the
concubine and the lover of his wife (Mrquez 257). Petra Cotes is objectified because she lets a
man, who has a wife, continue to have sex with her and just waits for him to come back every
time he leaves.
Petra Cotes is objectified by her lover, but even though she might be seen as an object in
One Hundred Years of Solitude, her role is very important to the text. Her sex with her lover
seems to be magical because the more they have sex, the more the animals reproduce. With this
mass reproduction of her animals, she creates the lottery and sells tickets and raffles off her
animals to make a very good living. It was during that time that it occurred to Petra Cotes to
raffle off rabbits. They reproduced and grew up so fast that there was barely time to sell the
tickets for the raffle (Mrquez 191). Also, when Macondo will not stop raining it is Petra, not
her lover, who does everything she can to save one of the animals during the long rain so she can
continue with the raffle when the floods and rain is over. Then she told him to look in the
bedroom and Aureliano Segundo saw the mule. Its skin was clinging to its bones like that of its
mistress, but it was just as alive and resolute as she (Mrquez 332). Petra is also the one that
ends up supporting Fernanda and sends her food up until she sees her funeral procession.
Several times, when she had no animals to raffle off and people lost interest in the lottery, she
went without food so that Fernanda could have something to eat, and she continued fulfilling the
pledge to herself until she say Fernandas funeral procession pass by (Mrquez 357). Petra has a
magical way of helping the animals reproduce, she is able to satisfy her lover to the fullest, and
she is the one that ends up supporting her lovers wife in the end, and that is why she is very
important to the novel.

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All the women in the novel are objectified even though they seem to fit into two separate
groups. One critic seized upon this naturalistic moment to assert that for all Garcia Marquezs
[sic] leftist aspirations, his work perpetuates the confinement of women to the roles ascribed to
them by male fantasy, namely mothering and prostitution (Roses 73). Pilar and Petra, although
not real prostitutes, would fall under the prostitution category because the main focus of these
characters is sex. Ursula and Fernanda would be put under the mother category. Their focus is
the house and their family. The elite women (such as Ursula), though they provide stability,
strength, and productivity, have been socialized in such a way that they cannot supply the
sensuality and eroticism sought by their Buendia consorts (Roses 69) Ursula and Fernanda try
hard to have this mother and wife role, but can never fully satisfy their men. Many of the men in
the novel look elsewhere for sex, and only use their mistresses for this purpose. In this case all of
the women involved are objectified. Although the objectification is prominent in One Hundred
Years of Solitude, the women actually have very important roles in the text and are very
important characters who help the male characters and Macondo in many ways, and without
these important female roles, the novel would not be the same.

Works Cited

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Allan-Hodges, Jill. On the Inside Looking Out: The Goddesses of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One
..Hundred Years of Solitude. California State University, Dominguez Hills, 2012. 1-22 Ann
..Arbor.
Deveny, John J., and Juan Manuel Marcos. "Women and Society in One Hundred Years of
..Solitude." The Journal of Popular Culture 22.1 (1988): 83-90.
Roses, Lorraine Elena. "Sacred Harlots of One Hundred Years of Solitude." (2002): 67-78.
Mrquez, Gabriel Garca. One hundred years of solitude. London, 1970.