Point of View

The story is primarily told from the first-person point of view of protagonist Chula, an adult narrator telling an important story of her childhood and young womanhood. The perspective is that of someone who does not know the full meaning, or even the full implication, of things she is seeing; the adult version of the character, however, has some sense of those things, and tells the story with an emphasis of communicating the meaning of those things through clear implication.

Occasionally, there are insertions of a second narrative point of view – the first-person story of Petrona, the young woman who comes into Chula’s home as a servant when Chula is very young. These insertions offer additional information and layers of meaning to Chula’s story, often offering explanation of, or insight into, actions of Patrona’s that had seemed, to the young Chula, to...