Fiction acts as a mirror or reflection of society, and reading it helps us understand commonly held notions, and ideals of the times. While this book is indeed a bit tedious and frustrating at times, Who Would Have Though It does help us get a clear illustration of history and societal values of the time.
Through reading this book, we come to understand stigmas of race, nationality, and religion that existed in the times that it was written. Interestingly, while these stigmas have evolved and changed over time, they still exist it different forms today. While the issues are today presented in different terms, having grown up in California, it is very obvious that great prejudice of Latin Americans are still quite prevalent.
In class we discussed the idea of Mexicans not crossing the border but the border crossing them. I think the idea of fluidity of geography between the New World, the Old World, and national boundaries within these regions is a theme that is well illustrated within this novel.
All in all, because this book is a tedious read, I think it is important to try and keep in a historical context.
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"I think the idea of fluidity of geography between the New World, the Old World, and national boundaries within these regions is a theme that is well illustrated within this novel."
Indeed. Here, the boundaries of the USA (boundaries that characters such as Mrs Norval believes are sacrosanct) are in fact constantly under negotiation... Not only with the expansion in the Southwest in 1848, or the border raid that leads to Lola's presence in California a few years later, but also of course with the country literally splitting in two during the civil war. Ruiz de Burton wants to show that these boundaries, between the "native" (which can have many meanings, of course) and the "foreign" are not fixed, but the result of historical processes.
I agree that it's interesting to see the evolution of cultural attitudes, such as racism, through novels written in other time periods. I cringed when reading the statements made by certain characters in this book, their racism being so vicious and overt. But as you say, these attitudes still exist, and I would say are even harder to deal with because they often manifest themselves in subtle, but still damaging, ways.
-Serena
In some ways it is a shocking thought that fiction is a mirror of reality and I agree that this often happens as with the case of Ruiz de Burton's novel.
I think that Ruiz de Burton portrays the degree of racism existing at the time when she wrote the novel, in a very powerful and thought-provoking manner.
Despite all of our society's movements towards multiculturalism, it is terrible that so much spoken and unspoken discrimination still exists today.
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