Since Sierva Maria was conceived she was tagged with the phrase of an outcast. Her mother Bernada, an Indian commoner was married to the Marquis, an aristocrat and both of them shunned her out of their lives; even stating “she will be a whore.”(P.42) The demons that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is trying to point out is the lack of love and duality. These two demons bring the novel to a grim ending but through it all you see that true love did try to conquer some of the demons.
Bernada and the Marquis had a bitter cold marriage and it was the hateful feeling that they had for each other that passed on to their daughter. When Bernada nursed her daughter for the first time she feared that the child would “kill her.” After that Sierva’s parents took no responsibility for the child and left her to the hands of Dominga De Adviento who nursed, baptized and taught Sierva three African languages along with the African culture. It was here that Sierva felt loved.
On her twelfth birthday Sierva and Dominga were at the market and a rabid dog bit Sierva, no one except for the slaves knew this until on day Abrenuncio, a physician came to the Marquis door and told him. He suddenly seemed very worried about his daughter, and as if
Dalaura was sent for by the bishop to perform Sierva’s exorcism but on inspection of the girl he was convinced that she was not possessed but only acting the way she was taught to act as a child. “what seems demonic to us are the customs of the blacks, learned by the girls as a consequence of the neglected condition in which her parents kept her.” And that is what he argued with the bishop over. Sharing his beliefs with the bishop did not make him change his mind and as Delaura kept trying to insist on her purity he started to fall in love with Sierva. Their love for one another started as a shared dream where Sierva is sitting at a window eating everlasting grapes, which represented the stages of their love for each other. Within time the bishop learned of Delaura’s affair and banished him from the church to go do volunteer work at a hospital treating diseased patients. This did not break the bond that Sierva and him had. He found a way to sneak in to see her and then back out at dawn. The next morning the bishop took command of the exorcism. By the end of the exorcism the bishop died and Sierva was sent back to her cell inside a straitjacket and shivering. When Delaura found her he immediately untied her and she fell into his arms. When Delaura did not return she started to lose hope and as time passed the dream they shared had changed. Instead of Sierva eating one grape at a time she now ate “two by two” but this time they didn’t grow back and their love died because it was neglected.
It seems that the only reason Sierva had to fake her demonic possession was because she was a kid and wanted attention. Her early childhood is what brought her to conclude that everyone that didn’t want to understand her, she would oppose violently. That is why African slaves were the only ones she c
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