The transition from childhood to adulthood is never easy. For the characters in Julia Alvarez’s book In the Time of the Butterflies and Elizabeth Nunez’s Bruised Hibiscus, the struggles to grow into one’s self are even starker in worlds of brutality and strife. As both works of historical fiction and coming-of-age narratives, these stories stray from the typical coming-of-age tropes and discuss topics of violence, rebellion, and the struggles women face in patriarchal dominated societies.
In the Time of the Butterflies, the Mirabal sisters’ transition to womanhood is anything but easy. These women are confronted with the oppression regime of Rafael Trujillo, the ruthless dictator of the Dominican Republic, and must decide between inaction and rebelling against the regime. On the other hand, the women in Bruised Hibiscus are forced out of their girlhood by factors beyond their control; one is kidnapped and becomes essentially enslaved to her husband, and the other in an abusive relationship that she cannot escape.
Both Rosa and Zuela have no real control until they start to take matters into their own hands and show their evolution as women. The writers in both stories demonstrate their character’s transition from girl to woman by showing the characters loss of innocence, sacrifice, and showing the women breaking free of their societal bonds. The loss of innocence in Alverez’s In the Time of the Butterflies can be clearly seen when the girls come into contact with Trujillo’s atrocities, which causes them to have a paradigm shift in the way they see their country and Trujillo’s regime.
The encounters with brutality the girls face is the way that Alvarez shows the reader a critical turning point in the sisters’ development as women and as rebels. Particularly in the character of Miranda, the stories of tyranny have an immense effect on her outlook on the political reality of her country. Although a rebel at heart from the beginning, Minerva really starts to come into her own when she goes off to college and opens her mind to the stories that people have about Trujillo. The story that has the greatest effect on Minerva is that of the story of her friend Sinita’s family.
Sinita tells Minerva about “the secret of Trujillo” where he is “having [the opposition] killed” which causes Minerva to encounter the truth about her country’s ruler. (Alvarez, 16 & 19) Even though the initial exposures to violence are through Sinita, the stories are essential for Minerva’s trajectory as a dissident and re-enforces Minerva’s existing need to seek justice. Minerva’s sister Patria also had a paradigm shift when she encountered the brutality caused by Trujillo’s regime. Her biggest encounter with the truth about Trujillo was when she watched a young rebel get shot in the back during an ambush.
As a mother herself at the time, she saw the boy as “one of [her children]” and as she watched the life drain from his eyes she decided to take up arms against the regime with her sisters. However, unlike Minerva, Patria sees her call to arms as a way to protect her children and create a better future for them. Minerva is more motivated on a personal level of wanting justice for the crimes Trujillo has committed, where Patria is focused on a societal level. Loss of innocence in Alvarez’s book is not so much about sexual loss of innocence, rather about how the character’s views on the world are shattered and must be made anew.
Similarly to In the Time of the Butterflies, the characters in Bruised Hibscus also experience loss of innocence when coming into contact with violence. Both of these characters are united by memories of abuse in their childhood and in their now adult lives. The most significant instance of abuse was at the beginning of Rosa and Zuela’s friendship, when they saw the rape of a young girl “too much like [them]”. (Nunez, 68) Hidden underneath a beautiful hibiscus bush, these place of safety in their childhood was now tainted by this memory of the assault.
The motif of a bruised hibiscus is seen throughout the plot as it refers to the moment that both girls truly lost their innocence. The bruised hibiscus can both refer to the place where they watched the rape occur, as well as represent how both of the characters evolved from that moment. Both Rosa and Zuela were then tainted by this instance as they experienced levels of violence in their own personal relationships as well, which they rationalized as normal because it was all they ever knew.
Zuela especially related with the girl who was raped, as she was also taken advantage of by someone much older than herself. As a child, Zuela was taken from her home to be the supposed daughter of someone she refers to as the Chinaman, but ends up becoming his wife and slave to his sexual needs. For a time when she was friends with Rosa, she could forget about her abuse, but “after that day behind the hibiscus, [she] could no longer pretend she was a girl who had never left innocence” (Nunez, 68). This demonstrates a loss of innocence in
Zuela’s life as she comes to terms with how she is not being treated like a daughter, rather as a wife. Rosa also loses her innocence during this event as she possibly internalizes that violence against women is okay which is observed in her relationship with her husband Cedric. He often sexually and physically abuses Rosa as he takes out his rage on her. As Rosa struggles to regain her relationship and feelings of affection towards Cedric, she is faced with both the inner demons of her past and present.
Nunez uses the memory of the rape as a starting point to show how the girls have evolved as she fluidly changes from past to present. Throughout Bruised Hibiscus, there is an ongoing theme of sacrifice. As illustrated in the character of Zuela, she makes daily sacrifices for the sake of her children. She often refers to her children as her hope in that, if she had been childless like Rosa “life for her would have been unbearable” (Nunez, 83). Without her children, she would not have the strength to fight back against the Chinaman.
For example, in the scene where she catches the Chinaman trying to give Alan drugs, she tells the Chinaman that she will “make a hell for [the Chinaman]” like he makes for her (Nunez, 88). Zuela using threats shows how she is committed to saving her children no matter the cost to her own person as the Chinaman could kick her out or physically torment her. Through her need to protect her children, Zuela becomes “conscious of a strange power growing within her” which is when she starts to become aware of the immense personal power she possesses.
Her power comes to fruition in the scene where Zuela kills the Chinaman by making him overdose on opium when she discovered that the Chinaman had sexually abused her daughter Agnes. Knowing that the Chinaman had begun to hurt her children sent her into a rage where she was “no longer a woman of a human…she was not a mother either…she was a meteor responding to the pull of gravity”(Nunez, 260). This shows how she has evolved as she is no longer at the pure whim of the Chinaman, but rather comes into her own power as an independent woman.
Nunez shows the transformation of Zuela from girlhood to womanhood as she arrives at the place where she can finally break free of the Chinaman and save both herself and her children. Often called martyrs, the women that In the Time of the Butterflies is based on are thought to have made the ultimate sacrifice by giving up their lives to better their country. These sacrifices can be seen throughout the book in the characters as they all make sacrifices for the cause. In some ways, all of the sisters have to give up aspects of family life.
The revolutionary sisters Minerva, Patria, and Mate, give up raising their children in order to have a better world for them, but Dede gives up being in solidarity with her sisters as she does not want to lose her husband and children. Patria, gives up having a normal life and keeping her children out of the line of fire. However, she realizes the importance of the cause and exclaims that she is “not going to sit back and watch [her] babies die” like the boy on the mountain. Patria is motivated by her grief of losing a child as she feels she must protect her remaining children from the horrors of the regime.
This is one of the ways that Alvarez explains the transformation from Patria’s initial self during her early years as a child and mother, to where she grows into the rebel she was meant to become. The other sister, Mate, gives up her education as she is drawn into the cause during her years in college as she finds the box of guns. She emerges from the naivety of her college years to the revolutionary by giving up her preconceived notions of Trujillo as she comes to also realize the secrets of Trujillo’s regime like her sister Minerva.
Minerva makes a sacrifice in that she has to relinquish time spent with her children whom she loves in order to create a better world for them to come of age in. She ends up giving her children away to her sisters, even if it “hurt[s] her to make this sacrifice she was convinced she needed to make” (Nunez, 155). Arguably, Minerva sacrificed the most out of the sisters, as she had to give up motherhood, her dreams of becoming a lawyer, and the continuing education. Even though Minerva is motivated by her calling to rebel against Trujillo, she still feels the consequences of her choice.
The sacrifices that Minerva made demonstrates how she has transformed from the somewhat selfish girl of her childhood, into a well versed woman who can now empathize and is motivated for change by the problems others face. Minerva is not extremely affected by the regime, as she is part of the privileged class in the Dominican Republic, but she is able to see the struggles around her which shows her personal growth. Some may criticize Dede for not sacrificing her life and for not sacrificing as much as the other sisters, but she was the one who took in all of her sisters’ children and protected them against the will of the regime.
Dede chooses to frame her sacrifice as more of a personal nature, as she cannot join her sisters like she wants, in order to protect her sons from the “raised hand [of] their father” (Alverez, 182). Dede was the only sister who did not have the support of their husband, and in addition Jaimito is abusive to Dede when she threatens to join the cause. Dede is trapped by the expectations of society more so than the other sisters. The characters in both stories are initially trapped by society’s expectations and have varying success of breaking free from those expectations to grow into themselves.
Rosa in Bruised Hibiscus, ends up not truly escaping the societal pressure to stay with Cedric and ends up being killed by the abusive nature of their relationship. The story follows Rosa throughout her relationship with Cedric, from their initial moments of sexual attraction, to the deepening hate that grew in Cedric’s heart. Rosa is a clear example of how she could not truly come into her own power. Her coming-of-age story is unique from the other characters as it shows more of a downward spiral as her preconceived notions of marriage and sexual relationships are changed through the constant abuse of Cedric.
She does not have the means in which to leave him, as she has nowhere to truly go, unlike Zuela who has found a way to overcome society’s expectation for her to be a good wife by falling in love with Ho Sang who can provide a sustainable relationship. Rosa cannot discover the strange power within herself like Zuela because she is too entrenched in the need for her relationship with Cedric to work out even though it never will. Zuela on the other hand, goes from living with an abuser to reinventing her life with Ho Sang.
She is able to rise above the expectations by society that are forced upon her through her own inner strength of character. Zuela has a lot of success in escaping previous restrictions on how she can live by taking it upon herself to change her situation. The Mirabal sisters also were breaking free of social bonds by going to college and not being subservient to their husbands. The act of personal rebellion against society is extremely important to the sister’s development into womanhood as they use this as a stepping stone to their greater acts of rebellion against the murderous regime of Trujillo.
Both Mate and Minerva could not have truly come into their own if not for their choice to go to college and to fight for their education that society deemed not important for girls of their stature. Without convincing their father of their education’s importance, Minerva would not have learned about the secrets of Trujillo’s regime and would have not met Sinita who informed her of the true reality of the country. These smaller acts of defiance demonstrated how the Mirabal sisters emerged from the closed off worlds of their childhood selves, to the dissident women they became.
Even though these narratives stray from the average coming-of-age stories, they still contain evidence of evolution in character development as these characters come into their own power as grown women. The historical narrative is somewhat separate from the true meanings of the story as it shows how people transform in the face of adversity. By showing the girls loss of innocence, sacrifices, and giving up on societal expectations, the authors show a unique take on historical coming-of-age stories and make these historical novels more personal by showing the immense character development of their women.
