Women of the Buenda Family in One Hundred Years of Solitude

¶ … Solitude

In Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, the author tells the story of seven generations of the Buendia family who live in the Macondo. The patriarch of the family has determined that the rest of the world is malignant and consequently demands that his family and their offspring all reside in isolation, apart from the rest of the world. Through the century that is covered by the plot of the novel, the men of the Buendia family become embroiled in all manner of sin and violence as they break away from the peace of their isolated life and become increasingly connected with the peoples of the outside world. Although the majority of the novel deals with the violence or diplomacy that is perpetrated by the men of the family, the female characters are at the crux of the events of the story and in fact most often cause them. The different female character types are epitomized by three Buendia women, Ursula Iguaran, Fernanda del Carpio, and the extremely popular and outgoing Renata Remedios.

Ursula Iguaran is the matriarch of the Buendias and married to Jose Arcadio who is the individual who founded Macondo and chose to separate his family from the rest of the world. In the tradition of strong, Hispanic mother characters, Ursula fully supports her husband's decision because she too feels that the world has sinned. However, Ursula is also one of the most unfortunate characters in the piece as she is unlucky enough to live throughout the century that is covered in the text, living beyond the age of 130. Consequently, she must witness the ideals that she and her husband had established wither and die with each passing generation of Buendias who comes along.

Fernanda del Carpio is part of the fourth generation of Buendias living in Macondo. She is also one of the few important characters in the piece who was not born in the community, but was raised in a well-to-do family who had chosen to isolate their daughter from the world. Therefore, she is both an embodiment of the pollution of Macondo from the outside world and a representation of what kind of person emerges from a family wherein she has been forced to have limited experiences with the outside world. When Fernanda marries into the Buendia family, she becomes hardened by the realities of her life and how they have not lived up to the promises of her childhood. She traveled to Macondo only because of a promise from her father and wound up married to a man who was unfaithful to the union and who would become obsessed with venial pleasures, leading to the financial ruin of the family. Fernanda does everything she can to keep her family intact, despite the fact that the Buendias never accept her but instead consider her as a perpetual outsider, even after she has taken over leadership of the family and took over the role of matriarch from her frail elder Ursula. Fernanda is iron willed, going so far as to murder the love of her daughter and then to contemplate the murder of her own grandson rather than admit his place in her family.

The final woman of import in the story is Renata Remedios, also known as Meme. She possesses her father's vibrancy and is constantly at odds with her mother, although like her elder relative Ursula does try to placate her. For example, Meme takes up the learning of the clavichord because of her mother's desire, although she has no interest in the instrument herself. When she shows herself to have more of her father's personality than Fernanda would wish, the girl is supremely punished. First, her lover is shot dead through her mother's machinations and then the girl is sent to a convent. Finally, her illegitimate child is taken to the Buendias without ever being aware of his biological connection. She is representative of the final strength of Macondo as a community, soon to be destroyed by the outside forces that the first father had tried to keep away.