In One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the story is written in a way that shows the time that is being written about. Marquez is showing this in his writing by having the men be the ones that go to war and doing all of the masculine things and making things in the household, while the women are doing things around the house and doing what will make the men happy. The woman was also the one that would be taking care of the children during these times. Women also weren’t the ones that were driving around; they always would have the man drive to their destination. Marquez is showing that during this time period there were major gender roles and both genders weren’t allowed to stray away from what was known as normal for their own gender. You can tell that all of these things are quite different in today’s world and some of these are very obsolete. By these things being obsolete in today’s society it shows that people nowadays have to do what works for the family and what each individual wants to do with their lives. The world has gone away from these gender roles and doesn’t have anything that is really normal for a specific gender.
That was during the time that Meme was beginning to frequent Mr. Brown’s house and it was still considered improper for a lady to drive a car. (285)
Another thing in One Hundred Years of Solitude that I noticed was that Colonel Gerineldo Marquez shared the last name of the author. Gabriel Garcia Marquez could have done this if he wanted to put part of his past into his novel. He could have done this to show that his background from his lifetime was very similar to what he was writing and he wanted to show that he has had a similar experience with what he is writing about.
I never considered the possibility that some of the events in this story could be based on some of Garcia Marquez’s own experiences; Marquez is a common Spanish surname, so I thought that it was probably just a coincidence, but now that you mention it, it seems likely that Garcia Marquez wanted to pay homage to his ancestors by naming his novel’s family after them.
I agree that the views on gender roles are reminiscent of the time period the book takes place in. It is an interesting idea that I didn’t consider that the author may be writing based off of his own experiences as well.
I had to remind myself what time period the book was living in. We’ve come a long way since then but we still have a long way to go.
Indeed, Garcia Marquez once claimed that his novel was true — or that, at least, he was simply retelling the stories he’d heard his whole life. And there is that quality to the novel of the “tall tale” that is told simply for the listener’s pleasure and amusement.