Eva Luna characters
Eva's cultural function within Eva Luna is to depict the endorsed gender stereotypes and oppression of the lower classes in order to show how that contributes to the cultural diversity within the fictive South American culture. Eva is the central female character in the novel and is constantly marginalised because of this. On the day of her birth she is classified as "bad luck" because of her not being a boy. She is taught from a very young age "men [have] it best" and women need to get married in order to be "complete." The domesticated job of being a servant throughout her entire childhood and the idea that men are masters over women is indicatory of the endorsed stereotypical gender roles of that society. Eva does not have much faith in any religion in specific, she was baptised due to the insistence of her madrina and grew up not believing in the Catholic saints that her madrina spoke to. When she worked for Riad Halabi she "worshipped Allah" in the Christian temple and while living with Melesio had a partiality to the "spiritual guidance" of the Maharishi however Eva is never affiliated with a religion in particular and this shows the decreasing influence of the Church on South American society in the twentieth century. Eva
Melesio's depiction as an outsider therefore informs the reader about the marginalised and excluded nature of the Jewish people in South America in that time. Melesio is generally defined by the various men in his life, "the whole house revolv[ing]" around them for the time that they are present; he feels the need to be a slave to them in order to "atone" for the fact that she was not born a woman. The Yugoslavian patrona, by which the reader knows no other name, is effective in representing the xenophobia and disinterest in those of other cultures in South America. " Allende's utilisation of Eva being the protagonist of the novel is significant as she is able to represent to the reader numerous cultures and sub-cultures through her own struggles and transformations. The first meeting the reader has with the "tall, strong Indian" is when he has been bitten by a snake and Professor Jones, his employer merely asks for him to be brought "as soon as he dies" so that he can become a "garden ornament," this presents the notion that the European colonisers believe they have power over the indigenous people, in life and in death. The beliefs and ideals of the Muslim faith are illustrated through Zulema and her rejection of these values once in South America. Zulema is utilised to represent the traditional values practised in the developing world, compared to her upbringing in the third world country of Turkey. He loses his power as the novel progresses because with age he is deemed to have "lost his reason" and therefore becomes an agent of the under-class. The cultures and sub-cultures that Melesio represents in Eva Luna are effective in assisting the reader an understanding of the attitudes towards homosexuals in the fictive South American society constructed. Her power through living in a colonised town is also exemplified by her own name which in Dutch means mountain. He is considered "foreign" even amongst the European Americans and this is indicatory of the extremely xenophobic nature of South American society. " His character convinces himself that it was not his fault that he was a woman born in a man's body and that he must "undo what nature" did to him. Melesio starts off living in the "Jewish quarter" of the city, which is constructed to be on the outside of city. Throughout the novel Melesio gets offended when called a homosexual, telling them that he was "born a man, but by mistake.
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Acceptance Essays
