Tradition versus Tradition

Tradition is both a tool of oppression and empowerment. Some people find security and hope in tradition, enjoying connections to their heritages through beliefs spread through the ages. Others consider tradition antiquated and unfair, enforcing practices that are no longer applicable to today. However, in both cases, tradition is viewed as influential, part of why there’s such power in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” translated into English by Gregory Rabassa. This story plays with gender as Elisenda and Pelayo, a married couple, discover an old man with enormous wings in their courtyard, an angel possibly. With conflicting advice from Father Gonzaga and a wise neighbor woman, they make a profit off the angel until he is bested by a woman transformed into a spider. Throughout this, Marquez uses traditional, gendered tropes to break traditional gender stereotypes, respecting both those who find power in traditional roles and those who don’t.

Marquez’s main tool for this is his three foils, each with one male and one female. Elisenda and Pelayo are the first foil, established as a married couple when Pelayo “ran to get Elisenda, his wife,” (Rabassa, 1). They are portrayed as a foil not only because of their marriage, being one another’s male and female counterpart, but also because they have similar roles in the story. Pelayo and Elisenda both discover the angel in their courtyard and experience frustration with him, despite taking advantage of him to make a profit. By working from the same place with the same goals, the small differences in their actions are more pronounced and allow for a better comparison. Similarly, the second foil pair, the wise neighbor woman and Father Gonzaga, are paralleled because of their alike roles. The wise neighbor woman knows “everything about life and death” (Rabassa, 1), revealing her spiritual understanding. Father Gonzaga is also given spiritual authority with his “Father” title. They both provide advice too. The Father “in a brief sermon warned the curious,” (Rabassa, 2) and the neighbor woman provided advice when asked by Elisenda and Pelayo. Like Elisenda and Pelayo, the wise neighbor woman and Father Gonzaga’s similarity heightens their differences, just as it does for the third, and strangest, foil pair—the angel and the woman transformed into a spider. They are both outside the natural world, draw crowds of spectators, and are held captive by humans who make money from them. These three foils, drawn together by their similar roles, highlight gender—the comparison between man and woman is the only variable consistent among them.

Rabassa supports the gender contrast of the foils by providing clarification in English for Spanish’s naturally gendered language. Nearly all Spanish words have gender, usually marked by “-a” or “-o” endings, matching the person they’re used with. When Marquez writes “llamaron… a una vecina” (Marquez, 1), he isn’t simply saying “they called a neighbor.” “Vecina” has an “-a” ending that denotes the neighbor as a woman, so Marquez says “they called a female neighbor.” This distinction is imperative because gender cannot be discussed if it is not in the conversation. Rabassa therefore translates “vecina” as “neighbor woman” every time she is mentioned. This suggests an extreme sensitivity to gender, as it would have been logical to only indicate the neighbor’s gender occasionally for the sake of being concise and avoiding reptation. By clarifying it repeatedly, it signals that knowing character’s genders is important. This is corroborated by every other characters’ names or titles, each clearly denoting their gender. Father Gonzaga, for example, is naturally gendered by “Father” in both English and Spanish, like the woman transformed into a spider is gendered with “woman” in both English and Spanish. Since every other character is referred to in such a way that makes their gender clear in both English and Spanish, it only follows the pattern for Rabassa to provide extra clarification in English for the wise neighbor woman. In doing so, he allows readers to better make clearer gender comparisons.

The form continues to focus on gender, as the diction in the foils’ content break traditional gender roles between Father Gonzaga and the neighbor woman. According to traditional gender roles, a man would have more say in spiritual matters than a woman, especially if that man is backed by the church. More generally, in tense situations, a man would be seen as calmer and more useful than a woman. As such, when the neighbor woman and Father Gonzaga do the opposite—show a woman as more helpful and spiritually wise—it breaks gender tropes. When the neighbor woman is introduced, she is described knowing “everything about life and death,” (Rabassa, 1). The words “everything,” “life,” and “death” are far reaching and weighty. Each word has so much packed into it that, being combined into a single woman’s introduction, it rings with authority and deep wisdom. This shows her to not only be spiritually wise, but also very helpful since that is exactly what is needed. Father Gonzaga’s description is far less flattering. He arrives “alarmed at the strange news,” (Rabassa, 1). “Alarmed” and “strange” have none of the wisdom or steadiness of the neighbor woman’s description. His description instead speaks to being caught off guard and being clueless. As a result, the neighbor woman is portrayed as more spiritually capable and helpful than Father Gonzaga, which breaks the expectation that a man should be more capable.

This deviation from gender stereotypes continues from form into content too, as characters’ reactions to the neighbor woman and Father continue to show her as more capable than him. The neighbor woman’s introduction frames her with authority because Elisenda and Pelayo go to her for help with the angel, “and all she needed was one look to show them their mistake” (Rabassa, 1) and inform them the creature in their courtyard was an angel. With her first action being a correction of the main characters’ mistake, she is shown as wise and authoritative. She is seen as especially capable because only needing a single glance to recognize an angel reveals a mastery of the concepts of life and death. Father Gonzaga, on the other hand, just “arriv[es] before seven o’clock,” (Rabassa 1). He’s clueless, unrequested, and ignored. He gives a warning sermon, but “his prudence [falls] on sterile hearts,” (Rabassa, 1). Where the neighbor woman is listened to and respected, the Father is ignored and disrespected, breaking the gender stereotype that men are better authorities than women. This is especially impactful because it happens despite Father Gonzaga having the church behind him. By showing the neighbor woman as more knowledgeable and capable than him even without a proper title and the weight of a large organization behind her, it highlights how greatly their actions break gender roles.

Elisenda similarly pushes against gender roles in her relationship with Pelayo. She is introduced when “Frightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife…” (Rabassa, 1). By introducing her as a wife to whom her husband runs for safety, a reversal of the traditional expectation that women run to men for safety, she is portrayed as a source of protection unexpected of traditional women. Pelayo then brings her to see the angel, which further cements the idea that, rather than Pelayo seeing his wife as someone lesser than him that he must protect, he views her as an equal who can handle seeing a disturbing creature with wings. Also, by waiting for her opinion before taking action, his respect for her judgement is evident. This goes against traditional ideas of marriage, where a woman’s opinion is lesser than and her mannerisms are too delicate for danger. This is also seen as “Pelayo and Elisenda were still killing crabs” (Rabassa, 1) that were flooding their house. By portraying the two of them together, equally doing hard, gross labor, Elisenda is seen as just as strong and resilient as her husband, which goes against gender stereotypes.

However, the prominence of tropes in these foils cannot be ignored, nor the argument that if characters cannot break out of their gender-based literary tropes, they are not truly breaking gender stereotypes. Firstly, Father Gonzaga, the wise neighbor woman, Elisenda, and Pelayo are all literary tropes common to their respective genders. Elisenda and Pelayo are one of the most common tropes in existence—a married couple, seen in everything from Disney movies to Hallmark films. Father Gonzaga is the trope of a righteous, male priest who cautions heedless townspeople away from danger. The wise neighbor woman is the wise woman trope who, through experience or contact with spirits outside of a traditional church, helps her community in mysterious ways. Both Father Gonzaga and the wise woman’s tropes stretch throughout literature, such as the Bible, the Iliad, and Shakespeare’s works. The Bible, for example, speaks of the wise woman of Abel Beth Maacah, who negotiates her town’s safety by delivering the head of her attacker’s enemy (NKJV Bible, 2 Sam. 20.14-22). The Bible also features righteous, male priests such as Aaron and Joshua. Shakespeare has Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet and there’s Kassandra, a priestess whose predictions are always true, in the Iliad. As such, Marquez is far from breaking gender literary tropes by having a wise community member be a woman and having a cautious priest be a man. Rather, Marquez is completely in line with literary tradition.

However, these tropes do not hold the characters back from breaking gender stereotypes. Marquez using tradition to break tradition is an ironic subversion that highlights rather than undercuts the foils’ departure from gender stereotypes. For example, the wise neighbor is no less authoritative and clear-minded because she is a trope. Her character’s traditionality does not prevent her from outdoing Father Gonzaga and, as a result, breaking the assumption that men are always more skillful in women in their respective fields. Similarly, Elisenda and Pelayo are married, but that does not diminish how Pelayo runs to Elisenda for safety rather than the more traditional reversal. Showing gender traditions broken by literary traditions creates a cruel irony. Tradition is portrayed as so weak that it breaks itself, which only strengthens Marquez’s reversals of gender roles.

Although, Marquez is not villainizing tradition either. By breaking tradition with tropes in two of his three foils, he offers respect to women who do find power in tradition rather than looking down at them. Elisenda breaks traditions as a wife and mother, two very traditional roles for women. However, she never complains about being a mother nor bickers about her husband. While her introduction “Frightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife…” (Rabassa, 1) does show her as more authoritative than the most traditional wife, the rest of her introduction sentence gives a feminine balance: “Elisenda, his wife, putting compresses on the sick child,” (Rabassa, 1). Her more masculine strength is combined with feminine healing in the same sentence, mirroring how, in the same character, tradition is both broken and accepted. Similarly, she is shown both “cutting some bunches of onions for lunch” (Rabassa, 4), a traditionally feminine task, and being “exasperated and unhinged… shout[ing] that it was awful living in that hell full of angels” (Rabassa, 4), a loud aggressiveness uncommon to women. By giving Elisenda a mix of traditional and untraditional actions, Marquez shows that tradition does not prevent a deviation from gender roles. By showing the traditional and untraditional coexisting in Elisenda, he shows that untraditional women may still find a base in tradition, just as traditional women may still push against uncomfortable stereotypes.

The neighbor woman accepts her gendered trope too, but still goes against gender stereotypes. Neither she nor Father Gonzaga ever complain about her role. She never bemoans her lack of formal education or role as a community resource. Rather, again and again she offers her wisdom to Elisenda and Pelayo. Her role as an assistant favoring brains over brawn reveals a feminine touch as she avoids an aggressiveness more traditionally connected to men. Yet she still breaks gender stereotypes because she so vastly outperforms Father Gonzaga, who makes a fool of himself in comparison. Like Elisenda, she breaks gender stereotypes, but does not portray all gender tradition in a negative light since she herself fits into some traditions.

However, Marquez uses the angel and the woman transformed into a spider to acknowledge women who completely reject tradition. Whereas the other foils are built on tropes, the angel and spider woman are as far from tradition as possible. An old, mangy man with wings and questionable divinity is a character unique to Marquez. Equally unique is the woman transformed into a spider. She deviates from all expectations of a women as a “frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of a sad maiden” (Rabassa, 3). This woman is so far from tradition that it is only her face that reveals her gender. She lacks all the beauty and pleasantness traditionally associated with women, instead being associated with “frightful,” “tarantula” and “sad.” Each word is uncomfortable and unappealing, pushing her far from traditional ideas of womanhood. As such, being completely separated from literary tradition and gender tradition, she is a testament to women who completely reject tradition.

This complete rejection from tradition is completed as the woman transformed into a spider reverses gender expectations with her male counterpart, the angel. Whereas gender roles would expect a man to be more dominant and successful, it is instead the spider woman who comes out victorious. She and the angel are pitted against one another when the spider woman comes to town, both trying to draw in crowds to marvel at their strangeness. The town recognizes that the angel’s boring talents and ugly exterior “had already ruined [his] reputation” and that the spider woman “crushed him completely” (Rabassa, 3). The crowds flock to her and the angel is forgotten. This portrays a woman in a position of dominance and competitiveness not traditionally associated with them. On top of her already rebellious character, this dynamic with her male counterpart establishes her as completely untraditional.

Like Rabassa’s form sets the base for these gender comparisons as he clearly marks characters’ genders, his translation also adds the finishing touch—his syntax embodies the story’s shocking use of tradition to break tradition. Marquez’s syntax in Spanish is surprising and subversive, mirroring his content. This is partially because Spanish’s syntax is so flexible. Adjectives can go before and after nouns, adverbs can go practically anywhere, subject pronouns are optional and, even when they are included, they can go before or after the verb. “Yo encuentro,” “encuentro yo,” and “encuentro” (all meaning “I find”) work equally well. Instances such as “he had to get very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings” (Rabassa, 1) have unexpected syntax. The sentence seems normal until the final two words. By placing “enormous wings” at the end, the reader’s mental image is distorted, and they have to reevaluate the entire sentence. The sentence’s rhythm, long and winding and riddled with commas, breaks up clauses, a quality Rabassa preserves with slight alterations. The “a very old man” is not present in the Spanish, instead going straight to description after “old man.” The “who” is “and” in Spanish. The last clause “impeded by his enormous wings” is more complex in Spanish, more literally sounding like “because his enormous wings impeded it (getting up).” While Spanish’s syntax can bear these extra twists and complications, a reader would struggle too much with a sentence this loaded in English. Rabassa makes these slight cuts and cushioning to maintain the surprising syntax, yet not retain so much of it that it becomes lost in confusing turns. This unusual syntax embodies the surprise of seeing traditional gender roles broken and amplifies how completely Marquez turns them on their head. By creating the feeling of shock in the syntax, every sentence makes the reader feel as much as read departures from gender stereotypes.

Clearly, Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” uses foils and tropes to subvert traditional gender roles, but still respects tradition. Rabassa then upholds this with being careful with gendered language and syntax. This text shows a nuanced and respectful view of gender stereotypes, presenting characters who both free themselves from them, but without looking down upon those who do identify with traditional roles. All together, Marquez and Rabassa present a work that balances Spanish and English as respectfully as the traditional and untraditional.