Honeyed Words: In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez · 20 February 2007

I have a soft spot for books that deal with relationships. This book is chock full of the ties between family, especially the traditional loyalties of the extended family, so it’s no big surprise that it hooked me. It follows a fictional reenactment of the lives of the historic Mirabel sisters, Las Mariposas (The Butterflies), killed on November 25, 1960 by the Trujillo regime they worked to subvert. As a Pisces, astrology tells me I’m doomed to be sentimental, so as the story unfurls with the drawing out of Dedé, the sister who lived, it rooted itself in that section of my psyche that is a sucker for reminiscence, no matter how sad.

I think Alvarez choose an interesting approach, in starting the story with the character of the “witness”, which she has stated is in the Latin American tradition of el testimonio, the bearing witness to stories which must not be forgotten. In The Time of the Butterflies, the character of the witness is a woman newly returned to the Dominican Republic from living in America. She constantly apologizes for her clumsiness with the language, and Dedé reacts to this clumsiness, betraying her amusement with it as she smiles when the witness uses odd phrases like "I am so compromised . . . by the openness of your warm manner." Even so, when Dedé winces as the witness arrives at her home to conduct the interview and slams her door, the line is drawn between native survivor and foreign interrogator. Dedé recalls that a person who had lived through the time of the revolution would take care not to produce a sound that could be confused for the sharp retort of a gunshot.

I believe Alvarez uses the witness as a means to highlight the barrier between Dedé and her final audience, the reader of the novel. Alvarez chooses to portray the seeker and witness of the story as the outsider, rather than have Dedé recount the story to people who were involved in the history. She further distances the witness character from the local culture by simply calling her "the interview woman." We get the feeling that this witness could be any woman, any person. By opening up to the witness, Dedé stresses that while not everyone may be aware of the political turmoil of the Dominican Republic during Trujillo's reign, or the personal pain that it caused to many families, that they may still approach the stories of the people. Alvarez shows that even an outsider is welcome to the memory of Las Mariposas, and that even an outsider can come to value the contribution they made, even if they cannot understand the full picture, or even communicate in the language

The story itself is told from the fictional perspective of all four sisters. We learn about each of them through their own eyes and the eyes of each other. At the youngest, the girls are teenagers, except for Maria Teresa, or Mate, the baby at 8. Small vignettes expose their distinct personalities: Patria, born into religion and delivered into sensuality; Minerva, high minded and idealistic; Dedé, clever with numbers but not so much with boys; and finally Maria Teresa, the youngest, always following bravely in her sisters' footsteps. These vignettes travel a timeline that follows the events leading to the Mirabel sisters' eventual assassination by the Trujillo regime.

In the first section of the novel, the path towards the girls' involvement with the resistance is not obvious. Only through Dedé's hindsight and guidance do we see how minor events create a web over of the lives of Las Mariposas that draws them closer and closer to being in danger from the Trujillo regime. The narrative of the girls is more akin to what you would expect of a large, loving, exuberant family as it nurtures four young women into adulthood. There are tales of love, of heartbreak, of wonder, of discovery. There are tales of touching faith and tales of lack of faith. There is the sense that these women could have been any of us.

The second section of the novel deals with the events after the sisters are actively involved in the resistance. The tone here shifts to a darker one, as Alvarez highlights the despair and futility of their efforts. There are short moments of hope, quickly dashed and short interludes of peace, rapidly broken. Alvarez uses this section to create a mood of desperation and to show how desperation acts upon the relationships forged in the first section of the book. The Mirabel sisters mature here, and Alvarez illustrates how they use adversity as a tool to sharpen their moral stances and their purpose. As the sisters fall on hard times and eventually meet their end, we learn exactly the price of resistance for each of them and their loved ones, and are able to mourn the loss not only of their lives, but also of the deaths of many smaller things that were lost under the oppression of the Trujillo regime.

In the end, Dedé must come to terms with having outlived the most important people in her life. In a way the story is not only the story of the three Mirabel sisters who didn’t survive, it’s about Dedé remembering the past in order to come to terms with her present, the present that doesn’t encompass her sisters, but that does include those who remember and honor them both as people and as heroes. By sharing her story with the witness, Dedé helps to heal her hurt, and helps the world to understand Las Mariposas for not only what they did, but who they were.

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