Evita and Maria as Powerful Women

Both Evita and Maria, in Evita (by Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro) and Child of the Dark (by Carolina Maria de Jesus), are products of a combination of both their times and circumstances as well as of their exceptional individual characters. The special circumstances of their lives challenged and drove them to accomplish what they did, forced them to do far more than they perhaps would have done in less challenging circumstances. Of course, there is no way to determine the dividing line between such internal and external forces, but clearly without a powerful inner drive to survive and succeed, neither woman would have overcome adverse circumstances. Both women were powerful characters, but Evita strikes this reader as a woman driven by vanity, while Maria seems to be a woman of great depth.

Evita's (or Eva's) early life showed none of the political involvement of her later life, although she was, with other girls, conscious of her socioeconomic deprivation and had a "'sense of outrage at injustice' directed at their families, their dull villages and their poverty" (Fraser and Navarro 11). Ambition and the desire to be in the spotlight were present in her at an early age:

Many girls possessed what she called a . . . Many of them wanted to be actresses, but most of them followed their parents' wishes, married safely and well, continued to live in the provinces and go to the movies once a week. Eva Maria had no money, little education and no proven talents, but she

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water, but Maria is always more concerned with others than with herself, in contrast to Evita: "I want water for the baby's bottle. My God, what are we going to do without water" (de Jesus 55). Selling trash for money to survive for herself and her children occupies Maria's every waking hour, in contrast to Evita's self-centered vainglory. Maria's story ends: "I got up at 5 and went to get water" (de Jesus 159). Saving her family, Maria impresses this reader far more than the self-obsessed Evita does, despite the latter's rise to the heights of power and wealth. 2. Gender plays a more significant role in determining the course of Evita's and Maria's lives than does race, although the truly central forces in their lives are social and economic. At the same time, even in that socioeconomic context, gender is crucial because women are invariably on the lower rung of the ladder of money and power in any society, and this is perhaps even more the case in Latin American cultures. Maria is the prime example of such deprivation based on gender. Not only is she a poor woman locked out of the job market by reasons of gender, education, residence, and so on, she is also responsible for three children whose fathers are irresponsibly miss

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