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Struggle For Power In Julia Alvarez's In The Time Of The Butterflies

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Women’s struggle for power in a patriarchal society has been a monumental fight throughout the ages, and even now women around the world fight for the right to simple rights like an education, and voice within society. In Julia Alvarez's book In the Time of the Butterflies the character Minerva Mirabel portrays women’s fight for power through her own personal struggle for power in her home against her father, and in the Dominican Republic society against Trujillo, and patriarchal norms of the time.
Minerva’s struggle for power in her family is displayed through her thoughts and actions concerning her father’s patriarchal rule of his household, and her going against what was assumed to be the way a daughter was supposed to behave. She doesn’t follow her father blindly, and trust him simply because of his authority, she treats him as someone equal to her. …show more content…

It’s shown through her fighting against the cultural norms by going into the study of law and fighting against Trujillo’s patriarchal behavior. She isn’t just interested in getting a husband like most girls were and tries to gain power through getting an education,, ”I’m not interested in admirers until I have my law degree (Alvarez 99).” She additionally struggles for power to fight against the patriarchal society, by not just going along with Trujillo’s patriarchal behavior, “The university is no place for a woman these days (Alvarez 99),” Trujillo tells her, playing off the culture and talking down to her using patriarchal thinking as seen in his syntax or structure of his dialogue, after not getting what he wants. However this does not dampen her attempts at grasping for power, and she displays a rather aggressive method of gaining power from Trujillo later on by slapping him after he sexually assaults her, displaying a thought process of her not thinking of him as someone higher, or more equal than

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