In the Name of Salome

“She indulged this habit of erasing herself, of turning herself into the third person, a minor character, the best friend (or daughter!) of the dying first-person hero or heroine. Her mission in life—after the curtain falls—to tell the story of the great ones who have passed on.”

The narrator makes this observation about Camila as she begins telling her life story for Marion. Camila doesn’t consider herself great. Her distinguished family overshadows her accomplishments both in the public record and in her own mind.

“I begin dividing my life into B.N. and A.N.: Before Nísidas and After Nísidas.”

Salomé’s world changes radically after the return of her father. In this quote, she refers to him by his pen name. This choice implies that his influence is felt most strongly in encouraging her to write poetry. This artistic expression is what makes her happiest.

“She is to sort out what to give the archives and what to destroy. The irony of his request is not lost on her—she, the nobody among them, will be the one editing the story of her famous family.”

Camila’s brother asks her to sort through their mother’s papers. She interprets this as a lowly task that no one else wants to do. In fact, Camila’s self-effacement makes her the ideal candidate to edit her mother’s papers. Her siblings are too full of themselves to be objective editors.

“Maybe it is a good thing to finally face each one squarely. Maybe that is the only way to exorcise ghosts. To become them.”

Camila is faced with ghosts from her past as she begins sorting through her mother’s papers. This quote suggests a way of dealing with bad memories, and it also suggests that Camila has already used this tactic to banish the ghost of her mother by becoming her.

“I dreamed of setting us free. My shield was my paper, and my swords were the words my father was teaching me to wield.”

Salomé’s observation indicates exactly the type of poetry she intends to write. The martial analogy indicates that she means to fight verbally with the oppressors of her country. Her father is training her for combat just as any warrior might train a son for battle.

“It was the time for poetry, even if it was not the time for liberty. Sometimes I wondered if this didn’t make sense after all. The spirit needed to soar when the body was in chains.”

This quote implies that deficiency spurs the creation of art. Salomé’s audience is inspired by her poetry about freedom precisely because the Dominican Republic isn’t free.

“All her life she has had to think first of her words’ effect on the important roles her father and brothers and uncles and cousins were playing in the world. Her own opinions were reserved for texts.”

Camila hesitates before making a speech honoring her mother’s work. In an ironic twist, the daughter is discouraged from voicing controversial ideas while her mother was praised for doing exactly the same thing. Salomé isn’t alive to defend Camila from the tyranny of the rest of the family.

“They don’t love me, Ramona. They love la poetisa, if you can even call it love.”

Ramona is envious of her sister’s ability to make others love her through the art she has created. Salomé rightly recognizes that public adulation is fickle. The moment she starts writing poems of a more personal nature, both her husband and the public disapprove.

“I bowed my head, acknowledging the applause, and after it had died down, and rose again, and died down, like a series of waves coming to shore, a man’s voice cried out, ‘What a man that woman is!’ It was meant to be a compliment, I suppose.”

Although the novel doesn’t often foreground the issue of female oppression in the 19th century, this backhanded compliment suggests that Salomé faces constraints that a male poet wouldn’t. As a young child, she isn’t taught to write by the nuns for fear that she might grow up to answer love letters. Without the backing of her male parent, she might never have developed her innate talent at all.

“Why was it all right for a man to satisfy his passion, but for a woman to do so was as good as signing her death warrant?”

Salomé’s comment speaks directly to the patriarchal constraints under which she lives. Even as Pancho is conducting an affair with a woman in Paris, he accuses his wife of a romance with their friend Hostos. Salomé is quick to point out this evidence of male privilege.

“Here she was—enslaved to her family’s smallest demands and fighting for these larger freedoms. But it sort of made sense. Hadn’t it always been easier for her to live abstractly rather than in the flesh?”

Camila has always been ready to meet the needs of her self-absorbed siblings and petulant father. Although she’s pointing out the contradiction between her campaign for women’s suffrage and her bondage to her family, she fails to recognize the larger contradiction. She doesn’t live abstractly because of these constraints, but because of the constraint that she has placed on herself to become an extension of her dead mother.

“‘No,’ she interrupts him. This appeal has almost always had its desired effect on her: Do this for me. ‘No, Max,’ she tells him. She does not say what is also in her thoughts: I’ve given all of you all of me for too long.”

This quote is closely related to the one preceding it. Camila again resents the constraints her family places on her. Max is pressuring her to stop campaigning for female suffrage because it would embarrass the family. Camila is still unaware that the biggest sacrifice of her life hasn’t been made on behalf of her brothers at all.

“‘I’ve often felt this deplorable gap,’ Hostos went on to explain. ‘We are forging the new man but not the new woman. In fact, without one we can’t possibly accomplish the other.’”

Hostos makes this comment in an attempt to persuade Salomé to start a school for girls. The book’s principal irony is that Salomé writes fiery poetry supporting the freedom of the citizens of her country without championing the rights of her own sex. Later, Camila leads suffrage marches in Cuba but is actively discouraged by her brothers from participating in these protests.

“The last thing our country needed was more poems. We needed schools. We needed to bring up a generation of young people who would think in new ways and stop the cycle of suffering on our island.”

At many points in the novel, Salomé doubts the value of her poetry. None of it has produced real change in her homeland. This comment comes just as she’s about to start a school for girls. She will revisit this same issue again and again before the story is over.

“Camila has tried to talk sense into him. He cannot save a country that does not want to be saved in the way he wants to save it.”

Camila expresses her frustration at her father’s obstinacy in attempting to restore the republic while living in Washington. The comment also reveals the biggest flaw in Pancho’s character. As a husband, doctor, and later president, he always thinks he knows better than anybody else how things should be done.

“You of all people should know the heart chooses strangely if it chooses at all […] But better the heart that chooses, she thinks, than the heart that keeps itself aloof, safely, in indecision.”

Camila makes this comment to her father, assuming he will object to her marriage to Scott. Even as she says these words, she still fails to recognize the source of her indecision. Her tie to her mother will always prevent her from deciding in favor of a potential spouse.

“Sometimes she wonders if she is incapable of offending. If every angry emotion is filtered through the memory of her noble mother and her suffering nation and comes out as a muted, mannerly remark.”

Camila is annoyed by her own blandness. She attributes her tact to the need to uphold her family’s reputation. Again, she fails to consider why she has no anger to defend. She has no personality of her own that might be offended. She is simply an extension of her mother.

“She will hear those voices in her head, calling her back with phrases that come straight out of her mother’s poems: Duty is the highest virtue. The best lives involve surrender. Whoever gives himself to others lives among the doves.”

Camila defines herself as the servant of others. She believes this is so because of the advice in her mother’s poetry. Her real motivation for taking these words to heart is because she doesn’t want to separate herself psychologically from her mother.

“She lives by continual little realignments that look to all the world like indecisiveness. But they are, I believe, the quivering of her moral compass toward its true north—which I think she believes is our mother, but is really her own soul.”

Pedro makes this comment to his friend as an explanation for Camila’s vacillation. When Camila reads these words, she denies recognizing herself in the description. Camila would fail to recognize herself in anyone’s assessment of her because she doesn’t know herself at all.

“That night in bed, I cried as I had not cried since childhood. I could not stop myself. ‘Tears are the ink of the poet,’ Papá had once said.”

This phrase is repeated at more than one point in the novel. Salomé’s father implies that sadness is the real muse that drives all poets to write. The quote also raises the question of whether Salomé would ever have become a great political poet if her nation was a safe and stable place to live.

“But I did not want my daughter to carry my name. I wanted her to have her own name, to be borne up and away from the life that was closing down around me.”

Before Camila’s birth, Salomé shies away from giving her daughter the same name. Eventually, she capitulates to family pressure and names her daughter Salomé Camila. Her initial misgiving in bestowing this name is well-founded. Camila never really has her own identity precisely because she shares her mother’s name.

“‘Heaven is for the dead,’ he says. ‘We’re going to keep Mamá alive, you and I.’ She doesn’t understand a word he has said, but she keeps her hand at her heart just so Mamá doesn’t have to die.”

Pedro makes this comment to Camila when she is only three years old. It becomes the unconscious motivation for her entire life. By assuming Salomé’s legacy, Camila is keeping her alive to avoid the pain of loss.

“I wove our two lives together as strong as a rope and with it I pulled myself out of the pit of depression and self-doubt. But no matter what I tried, she was still gone.”

At the very end of the story, Camila finally articulates what she has been doing unconsciously all her life. Just as she recognizes the fusion of her identity with her mother’s, she also acknowledges the futility of such an action. This fusion, no matter how tightly constructed, will not bring Salomé back.