Maria Candelaria was hated by society from the beginning
simply because of who her parents were. Society rejected her and took harsh
actions against her. From the beginning of the movie, I kept thinking of a
somewhat similar story, The Scarlett Letter. In the Scarlett Letter the people condemn
Hester Prynn for being pregnant out of wedlock but do not bother to find out
who the father is.
In both Maria Candelaria and in The Scarlett letter the
townspeople embody the worst of society in showing the overly harsh judgmental
characters that can come in large
groups.The
norms that society places can sometimes by completely unfair and even cruel.
Both these stories show this perfectly. Additionally, these stories show the
danger of group mentality.
Another similarity I saw was the artist and the reverend. Both
made bad choices of their own. The artist chose to go on and paint Maria in a
way she clearly did not want to be painted. The revered chose to sleep with
Hester Prynn. Both then made the choice of keeping silent until the woman
involved in their conflicts was extremely hurt.
The big difference in these two tales of how society can
harm brought me my biggest question though. The biggest difference was that Hester
did indeed choose to sin and slept with the Reverend. On the contrast, Maria
Candelaria did not sin because she chose not to take off her clothes. This made
me wonder…
Was the town of Hester Prynn less evil for judging her since she did do something wrong?
I would argue NO. Maria Candaleria shows how even something that
is extremely visible like a picture is not proof enough to show something did
someone. More so, both these stories show harsh, unfair punishments on both
ladies. Society punishing others of their crimes more often ends up bad versus
good. So taking this to a more individual level, each of us should try not to
judge, or even worse, punish others for the deeds we are unsure of.
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