Esteban--

   I started chapter 4, The Time of the Spirits, with a new stack of bright green tabs so I could mark all the spots I wanted to quote or use in my thoughts about gender. Before I was finished with the chapter I had almost run out of tabs and could barely keep the book shut because I had marked so many spots! That Esteban! From the treatment of Ferula and his jealousy of her relationship with Clara to his treatment of the peasants in Tres Marias he has an uncontrollable temper that seems almost out of place for the life he grew up in.  What makes him so angry towards the peasants and his family? We start to know him better from the side of the narrator (his granddaughter maybe?) then the side of his own memories when he is the narrator it seems as if he doesn't realize his temper was as bad as it was or that he felt justifies for it which is cruel and unusual either way you look at it.
   I will mention a few things about gender and then I want to just lay out some thoughts I have going into the next chunk of the book. Throughout the book it is clear that it is taking place in a time when women had not yet won the the same rights as men. To condemn a persons character for not agreeing with, what then were outrageous ideals, would be presumptuous  of me. I consider myself a feminist and I want with all my heart for the women in this book to be strong and resilient and independent, as they are-but I cannot change the past. The past is where this book takes place and it is a changing time where women were doing more than just staying in the house with the babies and the cooking but were not, for intensive purposes, able to vote and live by the same laws of men. But, I think more than just the gender issue here is an issue of humanity.  Being kind, generous, and fair with all humankind and not just the men, women and children of the upper class is the pinnacle now. There is a class system here that is deplorable considering the living situation Esteban grew up in you would think he would have more respect for them.  There is a fire burning in Tres Marias and it is Pedro Terecero Garcia and little Esteban Garcia. Who knows what that little brat is up too. Selling out his own blood to the patron only to be burned by his bastard father for it. I am almost afraid to start chapter 7. 
   We have seen the inkling of little Alba.  She will be the granddaughter and is mentioned by Esteban as having been born with the same emerald hair as Rosa.  I love the description he gives of her as he laments about the loneliness he has created for himself, but for the love of his granddaughter. "I felt so alone after that! I didn't know then that loneliness would never leave me, and that the only person I would ever have close to me the rest of my life would be an eccentric bohemian granddaughter with green hair like Rosa's" (202). It gives me a vivid image in my head of what this girl will not only look like but her persona as well.
    Shocking as the end of Revenge was with Esteban cutting of Pedro's finger and little dirty Esteban, "He had picked up the sliced-off fingers and was holding them like a bouquet of bloody asparagus" (207), foreshadowing something is about to explode with him as the tinder. I am glad that Esteban did not get to kill Pedro. I want to see what kind of upheaval he will lead throughout the rest of this book. I wonder if maybe his death will be at the hands of little Esteban...

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Victoria