In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

First published: 1994

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical realism

Time of plot: 1938-1960 and 1994

Locale: Dominican Republic

Principal characters

• Patria, the oldest, most traditional of the Mirabel sisters
• Minerva, the rebellious sister, who is drawn to the revolution early
• Dede, the surviving sister
• Maria Theresa(“Mate”), the youngest sister

The Story:

In 1994, Dede speaks to a “gringo writer” about her past. Dede, who is in her sixties, maintains a museum in the Dominican Republic in honor of her murdered sisters, who were nicknamed Los Mariposas (the butterflies). Dede acts as a guide for her guest, and when the writer leaves, Dede remembers a “clear moonlit night [in 1943] before the future began.” She is with her family and remembers her fun-loving father, her mother, and her sisters.

In 1938, Minerva is twelve years old. When she is sent to school, she learns the truth about the brutal Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, and she is drawn into her country’s resistance movement. She meets Sinita, a charity student whose brother was killed by Trujillo. Later, she is horrified by the fate of Lina Lovaton, the beautiful seventeen-year-old whose life is ruined by Trujillo’s courtship. In 1944, at the end of their school years, Minerva, Sinita, and their friends win a recitation contest and are invited to perform before Trujillo. In the dictator’s presence, Sinita moves toward Trujillo with her bow and arrow, but Minerva’s quick thinking saves her friend

In 1945, Maria Theresa (nicknamed Mate), the family’s youngest sister, is ten years old. She comments from her child’s point of view on a variety of experiences, including catechism, first communion, problems at school, and interactions with her family. She has positive feelings toward Trujillo but gradually learns the truth from Minerva, whose participation in secret meetings intrigues Mate. When Minerva finds that Mate has recorded her activities in her diary, she tells Mate that she must bury the diary to protect Minerva and her friends.

In 1946, Patria, the oldest sister, is twenty-two. She reminisces about her past as a religious young woman at convent school. Her struggle between her hope to be a nun and her growing awareness of physical passion is decided when she meets and marries Pedrito Gonzalez. When her first child is stillborn, she feels guilt for her choice. She remembers going on a pilgrimage with her mother and sisters. She had an epiphany looking at the weary faces of other pilgrims, realizing she had been looking “in the wrong direction” before.

Dede, in 1994, is concerned with the “deification” of her sisters. When the interviewer asks her, “When did all the problems start?” she remembers 1948, when the sisters met their radical friend, Lio. Both Dede and Minerva were attracted to him, but the family was upset when they learned Lio was a communist. Her parents’ reaction made Dede realize she was living in a police state. When Lio was forced to go into exile, he left a note for Minerva with Dede—just as her cousin Jaimito was proposing to her. Dede accepted the proposal but burned Minerva’s letter from Lio.

In 1949, Minerva has been “cooped” at home for several years, longing to be in the capital with Sinita. She is hurt that Lio left without saying goodbye, until she finds several letters. It is too late, however; Lio has gone. Minerva also discovers that her father has a second family and confronts him.

When her family is invited to one of Trujillo’s private parties, Minerva fends off the dictator’s advances with a slap. The family leaves in fear. Minerva and her parents are summoned to see the governor, and her father is arrested in order to punish Minerva. At her father’s request, Minerva takes money to his second family and, in a change of heart, proposes enrolling her half-sisters in school.

Minerva and her mother go to the capital to petition for her father’s release. Minerva is questioned about Lio and propositioned for Trujillo, an offer she refuses. Her father is released three weeks later, but he is ill and out of touch with reality. Trujillo sees Minerva and her mother and accepts a letter of apology from Minerva. The young woman attempts to gain acceptance to law school. Trujillo releases Minerva and her parents, but Minerva realizes they are still in danger.

In 1953, Mate is eighteen years old. Her father dies, and his second family attends the funeral, making Mate angry. Minerva is accepted into law school, where she meets Manolo. Mate graduates from high school and moves to the capital to continue her education. Minerva and Manolo marry in 1955; Minerva gives birth to a daughter, Minou. In 1957, Minerva earns a law degree and leaves the capital. When Mate goes to help Miranda set up her house, she is drawn into the revolution after meeting Palomino (Leandro), who delivers guns to Minerva’s house. Mate’s involvement has more to do with love than with politics; she and Palomino marry in 1958.

In 1959, Patria is thirty-five. She has been settled with Pedrito for eighteen years, but she feels restless. She is concerned about her two sisters, who are involved in the resistance, and her son, who is old enough to be attracted to the revolutionaries. Patria, pregnant for the first time in thirteen years, is worried about the health of the baby. She goes on a retreat with her priest and women from her church, where the group witnesses the killing of a large number of campesinos, including a young man who reminds Patria of her own son. The priest and the women join the underground. Pedrito, concerned at first that he will lose his land, relents for the sake of his son, and all three join the resistance.

In 1994, Dede, who has been divorced for ten years, recalls her former husband forbidding her from joining the resistance. She also talks about Minerva with Minerva’s daughter Minou, who asks why Dede wasn’t with her sisters the day they were murdered in 1960. Dede remembers being torn between her husband and her sisters and reluctantly choosing to stay with her husband because of their children. When members of the resistance were picked up after their plot was discovered, Dede became the caretaker of her sisters’ children as well as her own.

In 1960, to Patria’s horror, Minerva, Mate, the three husbands, and Patria’s son are all imprisoned. Patria lives with her mother, praying in her grief to a picture of Trujillo. Through her father’s second family, whose relative works in the prison, Patria receives a note from Mate with news of her sisters. Patria, Dede, and their mother send packages to the prisoners with the help of their half-sister Margarita Mirabel. Margarita has become a pharmacist thanks to the education underwritten by Dede and Minerva. Patria petitions to see the prisoners, finally securing visitor passes and her son’s release. Mate and Minerva form a community with the “nonpoliticals” in their cell. Day-to-day life is discouraging, but the worst experience for Mate is being tortured in front of her husband.

The sisters are released from prison into house arrest in August of 1960. Minerva’s stay in prison has left her ill and concerned for the husbands still in prison. Manolo and Leandro are moved to a prison that is closer to the family, but reaching it entails making a dangerous drive over an isolated mountain pass. Minerva describes the sisters’ final trip to visit their husbands in detail, including a shopping stop, their visit with Manolo and Leandro, and the stop at a little restaurant before they and their driver head up the mountain.

Dede has pieced together what happened next from accounts of many witnesses who have come to see her in the intervening years. She remembers her “crazy” reaction to the news of the murders and caring for her sisters’ bodies. Then she talks about the husbands, who have moved on with their lives with new, young wives and families. She comes to terms with her role as survivor and thinks of going to Canada and of the Canadian man she had been attracted to on an earlier trip to Spain. In the end, she is perhaps able to move on and live her own life.

Bibliography

Brown, Isabel Zakrzewski. “Historiographic Metafiction in In the Time of the Butterflies.” South Atlantic Review 64, no. 2 (Spring, 1999): 98-112. Discussion of the novel’s construction of the early life of the Mirabels, as well as its relation to feminism and postmodernism.

Ink, Lynn Chun. “Remaking Identity, Unmasking Nation: Historical Recovery and the Reconstruction of Community in In the Time of the Butterflies and The Farming of Bones.” Callaloo 27, no. 3 (Summer, 2004): 788-807. Postcolonial analysis of the representation of conflicts resulting from women’s struggles with patriarchal nationalism and the role of recovering past communities in responding to those conflicts.

McCallum, Shara. “Reclaiming Julia Alvarez: In the Time of the Butterflies.” Women’s Studies 29, no. 1 (February, 2000): 165. Discussion of the relationship between language and identity in the novel.

Sirias, Silvis. Julia Alvarez: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. A basic guide to Alvarez with chapters on four of her novels, including In the Time of the Butterflies, as well as chapters on Alvarez’s life and the Latino novel.

Socolovsky, Maya. “Patriotism, Nationalism, and the Fiction of History in Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies and In the Name of Salome.” Latin American Literary Review 34, no. 68 (July-December, 2006): 5. Discusses Alvarez’s ability to distinguish between remembering historical events and the risk of hagiography, forgetting the events by over-memorializing them.