Trujillo Relationships Between Men And Women

critics believe that relationships between men and women are recognized by power, and this power is emerged from a language in which men can almost dominate the whole members and individuals in a society. The life of the courageous sisters becomes textualized in the novel through a discursive polyphony of female voices that serve to illustrate the daily oppression of the Dominican population among Trujillo’s tyranny. In the novel, the myth of Trujillo's hyper sexual desire for girls and young women is addressed in close context with his political exertion of power as a seducer and tyrant, “Generally, it was accepted as a fact that the families of those young women who attracted Trujillo’s sexual interest were often pressured by the Dominican
Although it quickly becomes clear that the attendance of Minerva is especially requested, her father decides to accept the invitation. On this festive occasion, Trujillo seeks contact with the 23-year-old emancipated Minerva, who is considered the most critical among the four sisters towards the regime. To his frustration, Trujillo comes to realize that he will not be able to win the desirable young woman, neither personally nor politically, over to his side (Urioste 3).retrospective narration by Minerva, at this point, already illustrates Trujillo’s manipulative seizure, to which she must submit her body:However Minerva is not only physically exposed to the mercy of Trujillo. His manipulative conversation techniques also get her into trouble, as she reveals in the heat of the moment her personal contact to oppositional activists. When Trujillo threatens to close the University of Santo Domingo, knowing that Minerva wishes to take up law studies there, she tries to escape his manipulations by pretending to be submissive:Minerva’s risk of exposing herself with further statements to the despotic caprice of the dictator initially seems halted. Yet her adulate tone of behavior results in the violation of her corporal sovereignty a second time. This transgression induces a subjective feeling of anger in her, which the
The illustrated physical materialization of anger, which is constituted through the bodily uncoupled movement of Minerva’s hand, symbolizes not only a female bodily act of defense, but rather emblematizes a political act of resistance against a hegemonical sexualization of Minerva’s body by the dictator figure.Considering the historical context, Minerva’s self-reporting acting within the limits of diary writing is to be understood, although in terms of a typically female form of literary expression (Urioste 4), as a performative speech-act in the sense of Butler. In this way, the acting renegotiates Minerva’s subaltern subject positioning, resisting the heteronormative matrix of power and its rearticulating recitation practice. Thus, Minerva's retrospectively described anger avoids the gendered memory of embodied history. Only by this strong emotion does she succeed in transgressing the repressive discourse of the dictator, physically breaking his sexist determination.