The Role of a Sister

Rhiannon Martinucci

Sibling dynamics, whether they're more of a camaraderie or a rivalry, are often some of the most understated but important factors in whether or not something involving an entire family will work out. Whether the situation is simply a business or a revolution, as is the case for the Mirabal sisters in Julia Alvarez' In the Time of the Butterflies, ultimately the way that people interact with their brothers and sisters is a vital if the things going on behind closed doors are a family affair.

Angelica Schulyer, Alexander Hamilton, and Elzia Schuyler as depicted in the orignal cast of the Broadway Musical Hamilton. One of the most famous lines from Angelica in this muscial is "I love my sister more than anything in this life".

In Alvarez' fictionalization, Dedé is written as a woman who took the middle ground constantly - a peace maker, if you will - which leads to more than a bit of friction in her interactions with her three sisters. But Dedé's lack of outright collaboration with the revolution in Alvarez' novel doesn't mean that she wasn't just as important to the dynamic of the sisters. The second oldest of the four, she takes on the responsibility of caring for all three of her sisters at different points, bringing them back to themselves after their time in prison and during their house arrest sentence. I think one of the moments that stood out the most to me and illustrated just how seriously Dedé takes her job as an older sister was on page 277, when Dedé and Minerva have been stopped on their way to Monte Cristi. Minerva narrates, "I will never forget the terror on Dedé's face. How she reached for my hand. How, when we were asked to identify ourselves, what she said was—I will never forget this—she said, "My name is Minerva Mirabal." A few paragraphs later, Dedé will justify her lie to the soldiers who stopped them by telling them "She's my little sister".

Moments like these stand out, both in life and in literature, because they resonate so strongly with others. Stories and moments like these, where the dynamics we have come to expect and be comforted by suddenly change, remind us of how the people and ideas we think we know aren't always as constant in their nature as we may want them to be.

Discussion questions:

1. Do you think that Minerva, in this moment, wanted Dedé to have not attempted to lie to the soldiers at the checkpoint? If so, why do you think she would have wanted that?

2. What other moments in the text, both in the reading for today and in previous sections, do we see this sort of foreshadowing of Dedé's bravery when it comes to protecting her sisters?