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The Narrator
Angela Vicario, who happens to be the Narrator’s distant cousin, is the youngest daughter of Poncio Vicario, a poor man’s goldsmith, and Purísima del Carmen, a retired schoolteacher. Her family is of modest means and extremely conservative. Angela’s twin brothers, Pedro and Pablo, are taught “to be men,” while Angela and her sisters are brought up “to be married”—they are trained only in household crafts, such as embroidery and making paper flowers. As a young girl she displays a certain “poverty of spirit” and seems somewhat helpless. Accordingly, her parents are excited and relieved by the arrival of the dashing, enormously wealthy Bayardo San Román, who becomes obsessed with Angela and quickly asks for her hand in marriage. Angela dreads the marriage, in part because she fears what Bayardo will do when he discovers that she isn’t a virgin, but mostly because she does not love him in the first place. However, following the murder, she finds herself strangely fixated on Bayardo. Over the course of decades she writes thousands of letters to him, and eventually they are reconciled to each other. Despite the Narrator’s suspicions, she remains adamant that Santiago Nasar took her virginity.
Angela Vicario Quotes in Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The Chronicle of a Death Foretold quotes below are all either spoken by Angela Vicario or refer to Angela Vicario. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2 Quotes
The parents' decisive argument was that a family dignified by modest means had no right to disdain that prize of destiny. Angela Vicario only dared hint at the inconvenience of a lack of love, but her mother demolished it with a single phrase:
“Love can be learned too.”
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Bayardo has sprung a marriage proposal on Angela Vicario. Actually, to be more precise, he has sprung the proposal on her parents. Angela barely knows the strange, rich man, and certainly doesn’t love him. Her parents, however, insist that she accept. Their reasoning reveals two important aspects of the conservative, class-conscious culture in which they live. Firstly and most obviously, Angela’s lot at birth—her gender and her social status—have determined the path that her life will follow. When her parents assert that she has no choice in the matter, they aren’t exactly saying that they themselves are forcing her; instead, Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum
They insisted that even the most difficult of husbands resigned themselves to anything as long as nobody knew about it. They convinced her, finally, that most men came to their wedding night so frightened that they were incapable of doing anything without the woman's help, and at the moment of truth they couldn't answer for their own acts. “The only thing they believe is what they see on the sheet,” they told her. And they taught her old wives’ tricks to feign her lost possession, so that on her first morning as a newlywed she could display open under the sun in the courtyard of her house the linen sheet with the stain of honor.
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In this passage, Angela Vicario’s closest confidants try to coach her on how to conceal her lack of virginity from Bayardo, and reassure her in no uncertain terms that the town’s obsession with virginity is merely a performance. According to Angela’s friends, just keeping up the appearance of virginity is really all that is expected of a new bride. Even in the unlikely event that her husband is perceptive enough to notice her lack of virginity, he won’t say anything for fear of public embarrassment. In fact, it seems that public opinion is far more important than the private truth Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accu
She only took the time necessary to say the name. She looked for it in the shadows, she found it at first sight among the many, many easily confused names from this world and the other, and she nailed it to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written.
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Here the Narrator attempts to imagine how Angela Vicario came up with Santiago’s name when her brothers asked her who deflowered her. The Narrator’s description betrays his suspicion that Santiago had nothing to do with Angela, and that she offered his name at random, perhaps to protect the true culprit. Angela later denies this accusation, so what the Narrator writes here is pure speculation. His final, lyrical words, “she nailed it to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written,” convey quite clearly his deterministic view of the crime. To Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostru
Chapter 4 Quotes
She became lucid, overbearing, mistress of her own free will, and she became a virgin again just for him, and she recognized no other authority than her own nor any other service than that of her obsession.
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After Santiago’s murder, Angela Vicario falls mysteriously in love with Bayardo, and she begins writing to him every day. Here the narrator explains that her obsession allows her to transcend, in a certain sense, the social restrictions that had determined the course of her life up until her disastrous marriage. The Narrator’s claim that Angela succeeds in “becoming a virgin again” emphasizes that virginity is more of an imaginary social construct than a physiological fact. Furthermore, Angela’s obsessive letter writing is a kind of ritual for her; however, unlike most rituals in the novel, it is highly personal, emerging from Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. A
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Angela Vicario Character Timeline in Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The timeline below shows where the character Angela Vicario appears in Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...the bishop’s arrival, the townspeople begin to discuss the other great news of the hour: Angela Vicario, the bride who was married the night before, has been returned to her parents...
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Chapter 2
The Narrator begins by recounting the arrival of Bayardo San Román, the man who marries Angela Vicario. Bayardo first appears, apparently at random, on a steamboat coming up the river. He...
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...the public memory about how and when Bayardo San Román decided he wanted to marry Angela Vicario. Some claim that Bayardo, sitting on the porch of the boarding house where he...
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Others say that Bayardo San Román first sawAngela Vicario at a charity bazaar. A music box was being raffled off. Bayardo bought all...
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...family. They are poor and extremely conservative—the matriarch Purísima del Carmen “looks like a nun.” Angela is the youngest of four daughters, one of whom is dead; when Bayardofirst arrives, the...
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After this revelation, it seems that Angela Vicario is the only one left who is apprehensive about the marriage. She doesn’t love...
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Bayardo asks Angela which house in the town she likes best. She answers casually that the old widower...
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Meanwhile, Angela Vicario grows increasingly worried. She shares her secret—that she isn’t a virgin as everyone thinks—with...
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...night, Pura Vicario is awakened by a knock on the door. It’s Bayardo San Román. Angela Vicario is standing beside him, her dress in tatters. To Pura they look like ghosts....
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Chapter 3
...doesn’t plan to do anything about it. It isn’t until his wife tells him that Angela Vicario has been returned to her mother that Aponte starts to think the twins might...
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...house and sang beneath the window of the newlywed couple, not knowing that by then Angela had already been returned to her mother.
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Chapter 4
The rest of the Vicario family decides to leave town. Pura Vicario wraps Angela’s head in a towel to hide the bruises from her beating, and dresses her in...
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The Narrator now focuses on recounting Angela Vicario’s life after the murder. Many years later, the Narrator travels to the backwater town...
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...their encounter in the hotel, she began writing letters to Bayardo. He never replied, but Angela found that the more she wrote to him, and the longer he went without replying,...
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Chapter 5
...all, though, he is vexed by the utter lack of evidence connecting Santiago Nasar to Angela Vicario. For the Magistrate—and for the narrator—Santiago’s behavior in the hours before his murder is...
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...angry than scared, thinking that the Vicario family would end up forcing Santiago to marry Angela as penance. When he enters Flora’s house, Santiago finds Flora in a rage. She shoves...
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