A deeper look at Isabel Allende's “The Judge's Wife”
“The Judge’s Wife”is talking about a man who born with deformed organism is doomed to die of a woman. Thus, his mom gave him a lofty name, Nicolas Vidal, trying to prevent him from the tragedy. Nicolas Vidal grows up in an environment lack of love; for he knows that he may put himself in the danger once he falls in love with a woman. The prophecy makes him a cold-blooded man. He is the most notorious guy in the town, and no one dares to against him except for Judge Hidalgo. Judge Hidalgo is the antagonist in the story. He has great passion for justice so he works hard on capturing Nicolas Vidal. He once set a delicate trap to grab Nicolas Vidal, but the result is further beyond his expectation. He puts Nicolas’s mom in the cage and gives her only a little bit of water, assuming that Nicolas would come to save her. However, Nicolas Vidal never shows up. Instead, Casilda stands out to save the woman’s life. Casilda is the judge’s wife with most feminine characteristics. She is powerless, weak, and dependent. To readers’ amazement is, she has no fear in the face of Nicolas Vidal. Resulted from the sudden death of her husband, she has no choice but to put herself in the fight in order to protect her children. The climate and the breakthrough in this story is that this feminine character is the one whom the most courageous protagonist surrenders to. Casilda uses her sexual power to melt Nicolas Vidal’s iron-like heart. Though she forgets her aim to win time for her children in the process of the unexpected intimacy, Nicolas Vidal doesn’t escape from his fate. Casilda begs him to flee when she hears the voice of soldiers in the distance, but he chooses to embrace her until the last moment and fulfills the prophecy.
The theme of this story is that fate is inconvertible no matter how deliberately human beings try to escape from it. The result which we don’t want it to happen may be able to be suppressed by human factors temperately, but the destiny is after all unchangeable. Besides Allende’s life philosophy, stereotype implicated under her hands is another worthy aspect to explore. Stereotype can be found in Nicolas Vidal’s appearance and the correspondent prophecy; the judge’s tidy dress and his austere trait; the acceptance and the rejection by society; and Casilda’s feminine characteristics. It is reasonable to infer that these stereotypes are related to the place where Allende grew up and the value of the society in 1950s.
“Casilda was passive, demure, timid woman who had been married to an austere old man in front of whom she had never even dared appear naked (Kennedy, Gioia 289).” Words like “passive,” “demure,” and “timid” are used to describe this feminine tale, a character whose characteristics are usually associated with women in 1950s Latin America. We learned from Western History that sexual inequality was deeply rooted in 1950s Latin America, so it is not hard to think why Allende created such character. Allende make Casilda a typical woman whose traits are more acceptable to the society then by using words like “wondered eyes (Kennedy, Gioia 283),” and “insubstantial (Kennedy, Gioia 284),” accentuating her strongly feminine image. A weak woman like Casilda casts fear aside in the plight due to the nature of a mother. Nonetheless, as a female, she is too powerless to fight with Nicolas Vidal, so she has no choice but to use her body as weapon. Taking advantage of sexual power to captivate a man is a common strategy when people think of woman, and it matches to the stereotype toward 1950s women in Latin America.
The characteristics of Casilda shows the stereotype towards women in Allende’s era; on the other side, the appearance of Nicolas Vidal and the correspondent prophecy of his destiny shows the stereotype towards people who are rejected by the society. Nicolas Vidal was born in a windowless room. He is the son of a whore and an unknown father. “The world has no place for him, and his mother knows it (Kennedy, Gioia 283).” In this sentence, the stereotype that those who come from unsound family are less acceptable by the society is proved via the voice of Nicolas Vidal’s mom. He has four nipples, which leads to a prophecy that he will lose his head over a woman. The prophecy in the end turns to be true, which supports the fetishistic belief rumored in Latin America. From here, we see that the era and the surround environment do have influence on the writing of the author. Superstition is the common stereotype when people think of Latin America. According to history textbook, their ancient kingdom was taken over by Spanish because they believed in the mythology. Allende took on Latin American culture in her description of the prophecy. She also gave readers a clue to discover what kind of person is more apt to have the prophecy come true and is inclined to be rejected by the society. She used negative words like “doleful (Kennedy, Gioia 283),” “fearsome (Kennedy, Gioia 283),” and “hardened heart (Kennedy, Gioia 284)” to describe this protagonist. These negative words also implicate the tough life of this tale. “His face was scarred from knife fights before he reached his teens, so it came as no surprise to decent folk that he ended up a bandit (Kennedy, Gioia 285).” The use of “no surprise” strongly indicates how deeply stereotype was rooted in that society. The sentence can be explained that Nicolas Vidal’s look is supposed to be a bandit and be rejected by the public because of his look.
Allende bestowed strong image on both protagonist and antagonist. The antagonist is called Judge Hidalgo. She created a strong image for this tale while applying common stereotype toward judges on him. Hidalgo is Casilda’s husband. He has great passion for justice. Words like “severity (Kennedy, Gioia 284),” and “stubbornness (Kennedy, Gioia 284)” were used to depict him. Those are common adjectives when people think of judges. It is not hard to guess from those words that the judge is a guy who doesn’t know how to please women. Thus, these words give the following development a full explanation about why Casilda finds herself gratitude towards Nicolas Vidal after she gave him the complete self. “He dressed formally in black; his boots always shone with beeswax (Kennedy, Gioia 284).” Black gives people a feeling of harshness and “dressed formally” indicates the judge’s profession. Besides, “shinning boots with beeswax” is the common impression which those professions give to people. Judge Hidalgo is righteous, but he is too prim.
Stereotype and superstition are two features of “The Judge’s Wife.” By analyzing Allende’s characters, readers are able to get acquainted with Latin American culture in 1950s. No matter stereotypes toward women, rejected people, or professions, Allende used accurate words to make vivid descriptions. Her depiction of characters is one of the most distinguishing features of the story.
Another plausible part is the structure of this short story. Allende made a great arrangement in the limit space. She used elements like stereotype, superstition, and also romantic plot to connect the whole page. She firstly pointed out the weakness of Casilda, but she finally let this powerless woman end the life of the scariest guy. The most touched part is that Nicolas Vidal chooses to fulfill the prophecy in the face of love. A concept that Allende used romantic relationship as the bridge to establish equality between men and women was pointed out in Thompson’s paper. “‘The Judge’s Wife’ and ‘Revenge’ represent Allende’s strategy of feminist resistance against patriarchal domination within romantic relationships (1).” “Revenge” is another work also written by Allende and is always compared to “The Judge’s Wife.” Both stories stand for the sexual equality within romantic relationship. “Patriarchal domination” is contrast to feminine weakness, but “feminist resistance” does conquer the inequality existed in stereotype “within romantic relationship.” The use of words such as “patriarchal domination” and “feminist resistance” further confirmed the stereotype bond in “The Judge’s Wife,” but these two words also play significant role in making a balance within romantic relationship.
The story is short, but the structure is compact. “Nicolas Vidal always knew he would lose his head over a woman (Kennedy, Gioia 283).” Allende in the beginning points out the background of the story, giving readers a clue to the development. This sentence in effect challenges the patriarchal society in postcolonial Latin America. “In using narrative strategies to undermine and disempower patriarchal domination, Allende’s writing builds upon a tradition of literary inheritance from writers like Rosario Castellanos (Thompson 1). Thompson used the word “disempower” to tell readers that Allende’s writing of “The Judge’s Wife” is avant-garde, and he gave her a compliment when he said that Allende’s writing style can be tracked back to Rosario Castellanos, a Mexican female writer who is one of the most essential literary voice in the last century.
Allende made Casilda a traditional woman who matches to all stereotype towards women in the patriarchal world. In the short pages, she briefly described how Casilda succumbs to her husband and has no jobs but to take care of her three children. Most of Casilda’s images are indicated in the story via the voice of Nicolas Vidal. His negative tone in talking about Casilda is the most satirized contrast in the story because he ends up being crazy for the “lifeless ghost (Kennedy, Gioia 284)” whom he hasn’t paid heed to. “Casilda is seemed to him almost ugly (Kennedy, Gioia 284).” Nevertheless, “Nicholas Vidal chose to fold her in a last embrace, thus fulfilling the prophecy that had sealed his fate from the start (Kennedy, Gioia 283).” It says that though women are tender and powerless, they have capacity to resist men. This concept was unacceptable in 1950s Latin America, so Thomas praised her strategy on undermining patriarchal domination. Allende indicates that sex equality does exist in the world called love, and stereotype is nothing in front of it. “Allende’s narrative strategies contextualize this ‘love’ to counteract the prevailing myth by complicating established binaries such as active/passive, masculine/feminine and dominator/dominated (Thompson 1).” There are plenty of conflictions set in the story. For example, Nicolas Vidal’s original negative impression of Casilda and his final affection towards her; Casilda’s weakness in front of her husband and her courage in the plight; Casilda’s timid property and her fire-like passion in the process of making love with Nicholas Vidal; and so on. These conflictions are keys to the climate in the story, carrying Allende’s desire of sexual equality.
In “The Judge’s Wife,” Allende took on the stereotype prevailing in 1950s Latin America. Though all her tales’ properties match to the common stereotype, she set lots of confliction to implicate that nothing is absolute. In addition, the ending that the mighty Nicolas Vidal’s head was lost over an emasculated woman is controversial in the dominant patriarchal world. She used narrative strategy to disempower the dominant in a limited space with proper language and sound structure, which is the value of this work.