In the time of the butterflies
Uploaded by Bambina on Feb 20, 2002
In the novel “In the Time of the Butterflies” by Julia Alvarez, the four Mirabal sisters were influenced by oppression. The impact oppression had on the sisters, led them through their stages of development in life. Maria Teresa, like her sisters went through three stages of status quo, change, and consequence.
Maria Teresa’s attitude toward life was carefree, fashionable and fun. The reader can tell she wasn’t into the politics of that time, nor was she the first sister to discover the oppressed society she was living in. Unlike Minerva, her “soul just wants to have fun” (34).
Mate wrote everything that happened to her down into a diary. Now that she “knew things she wasn’t supposed to”, she could be held accountable for anything she knew. When someone had been found out, everyone in the secret meeting group was told to bury and evidence of anything. Minerva told Mate to bury her diary. In saying her farewells to her “Dear Little Book”, she said, “My soul has gotten deeper since I started writing in you” (43). When she was still unaffiliated with the revolution, and her friends and family would talk about the regime or the president, Trujillo, the wrong way, “It scared her…with guards around and anybody a spy” (132). Mate was easily worried about anything controversial. She did not yet involve herself in the revolution. She loved Trujillo and though of him as a god, until she was affected.
As an innocent, little girl, Mate was unaware of what was going on in the environment around her. Government and politics did not appeal to her. As she got older and began feeling the affects of the governments and everything else around her, Mate began a change in herself, a change in how she thought, spoke and acted. This change brought her from adolescence to womanhood. With all the stories going around about disappearances and killings of people disobeying the regime, Mate began hating the government and Trujillo. She was awarded Miss University at University in the Capital, which she and Minerva attended. While writing her acceptance speech she was writing the unspoken, mandatory gratitude to Trujillo for being a wonderful leader, Minerva suggested she not over-do the mandatory gratitude, especially after the recent disappearance of a young man who wrote a book against the regime. Mate said, “I get so upset thinking about him, I don’t want to be queen...