Narrating History: Self-Reflexive Blending of Fact and Fiction in Julia Alvarez’s in the Time of the Butterflies

Abstract

Historical reconstruction a literary and critical process is a conscious reconstruction of visual and narrative representations associated with moments of oppression and resistance in the past Reconstruction does not necessarily correct or revise the historical record but it does provide a way to reexamine the past through a different lens In the Time of the Butterflies 1994 is just one example of how Alvarez works drawing the attention of the Dominican public and the historical record to the lives of the four Mirabal sisters 1914 1939 Patria Minerva Dede and Maria The novel skillfully chronicles each sisters personal and political awakening as they face both the brutality of Trujillos dictatorship and the patriarchy that defined their daily lives Alvarez combines fact with imagination to create a character who can become a storyteller a mediator and an informal historian In this paper I contend that Alvarezs novel not only creates a distinctly femalecentred representation of Dominican history but also by using the term historiographic metafiction coined by Linda Hutcheon challenges the dominant historical narratives and instead presents the Mirabal sisters as complex fully realised human beings not just mythologised martyrs