Book Review: In the Time of the Butterflies
The place is the Dominical Republic. The time is Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship of 1930–1961. “Butterflies” (mariposas) is the underground name given to the Mirabal sisters by the resistance. Julia Alvarez’s 1994 novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, fictionalizes the lives of these four sisters who emerged from the resistance as national symbols of freedom and hope.
In an interview with PBS in 2002, Alvarez is asked about her “creative interpretation of history” and how she went about weaving fact and fiction in the novel. In preparation for her response, Alvarez brings her hands up to the table and tilts her head softly. She pauses, and then begins, “When you say a creative interpretation of history…what other kind is there?”
She laughs a bit and then gets at the heart of the question. More important to Alvarez than sticking to the facts and the precise order of events for this story, is that readers connect with the Mirabal sisters, feel as if they know them, understand what it must have been like to live in the Dominican Republic in that time.
“History, creatively understood,” says Alvarez, “is the way to understand it.”
Readers need not be familiar with the Trujillo’s dictatorship to know the fate of the four sisters in this story. We understand, in the very first chapter, that Dedé is the only one of the four sisters to survive. The real story is in how the sisters, Patria, Dedé, Minerva, and Maria Teresa find their way to the resistance, a winding path full of doubt and questions, loyalty and personality. We fall into the women’s lives as they go from sheltered girls living an easy life, to curious teenagers hungry for information about the real world; from young women, blinded and influenced by love and attraction, to strong, sage women (and wives and mothers) with their own drives to think and act.
Alvarez moves us briskly along, the plot skipping easily through the decades, the chapters evenly alternating between the sisters’ points of view. All of the chapters from Maria Teresa are written in the form of journal entries, and the effect between the different styles is seamless. But with Maria Teresa’s chapters, the feeling of reading intimate (secret) journal entries brings the reader even closer to the story. As she writes, she acknowledges that keeping the journal puts her in danger, and sometimes her train of thought is cut off with a note that says “pages torn out.”
And Alvarez’s writing style, drilled down the the line, to the word, is its own kind of poetry:
He led me down the drive past the dented Ford into the dark garden. The moon was a thin, bright machete cutting its way through patches of clouds. By its sharp light I could see my father stop and turn to face me…There was no warning it was coming. His hand slammed into the side of my face as it never had before on any part of my body. I staggered back, stunned more with the idea of his having hit me than with the pain exploding in my head.
The lives of the women are so known to us, so full and real on the page that it’s difficult for us to pinpoint exactly when it happened — exactly when they became revolutionaries. Minerva was the leader and the most involved in the resistance. What was her catalyst? Was it boarding schoo where she listened to stories from Sinita, whose family members had nearly all been killed or disappeared by El Jefe? Was it meeting Lio who involved her in his underground dealings with the resistance? Was it when she slapped El Jefe in the face on the dance floor at a private party in one of his mansions? Or was it this moment under the sharp light of the machete-like moon when her own father slapped her?
Julia Alvarez wants us along for all of the details of the lives of the mariposas, whether they’re fact or fiction, because she doesn’t want to glorify or sensationalize what they did. That would draw a line between us (mortals) and them (martyrs). She’s more interested in all of us seeing how real these women were and how incremental their path toward bravery was. We are all capable of doing what they did.
At the end of the book, Dedé, the surviving sister, the one who stayed on the sidelines rather than get very involved in her sisters’ clandestine doings, eases us out of the story in a way that allows us to process it all. Her role in the book as the one who bears the emotional brunt of reliving her sisters’ painful ending, is true to the life of the real Dedé.
Dedé Mirabal raised her sisters’ children and lived in the same home (turned museum) of her childhood until she died at age 88. She received people who wanted to know more about the mariposas, retelling their story whenever she was asked. In this way, she could find meaning in her own survival.
Julia Alvarez’s family fled the Trujillo dictatorship when she was ten years old, and as a result, she writes with a cultural understanding that comes across in the clothes her characters wear, the phrases they say, the foods they eat, and the sweeping vistas of her native island. Alvarez, who dedicated the book to Dedé, explores the guilt, love, admiration, and frustration the surviving sister felt around her beloved family of mariposas, handling the entire story delicately and with deep affection.
