The Chieftest Mourner by Aida Rivera-Ford Essay Example

his wake. He’s described as ‘…an extremely considerate man when sober…’ in the text, which also shows to the reader that he’s also quite the drunkard, which alienates him from his first wife. She tied him up in a chair while inebriated to teach him a lesson and also showed the extent of her exasperation.

This event is what one could refer to as the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of their relationship. Afterwards, his uncle left her aunt. Her aunt is described although not explicitly that she’s on the heavier side, with passages from the text such as ‘…to offset the collective bulk of Aunt Sophia and myself, although I was merely a disproportionate shadow behind her. ’ Her aunt still keeps tabs with her uncle, gossiping about his affairs and about his second wife. It shows that she still cares for him and obsesses over him even after their separation.

In comparison to the second wife, this woman is shown to have more grace and class than Aunt Sophia, indirectly stated by the protagonist as well. ‘Something about her made me suddenly ware that Aunt Sophia’s bag looked paunchy and worn at the corners. ’ When the protagonist saw the cluster of flowers her aunt left in the shape of a dove, she remarks that ‘I looked at Aunt Sophia and didn’t see anything dove-like about her. ’ Yet when the narrator introduces the other woman, she describes her as ‘…a young, accomplished woman of means.

We learn more about her in Aunt Sophia’s disparaging remarks to the other woman, nicknamed as the ‘la mujer esa,’. She describes the second wife as ‘…that

horrid woman never allowed him to have his own way; she even denied him those little drinks which he took to merely aid him in his poetic composition. ’ Those little drinks did more to affect his health than his creative process and the second wife saw to that. It reveals her commitment to the poet. Ultimately, the difference between this woman and Aunt Sophia is at the end of the story.

The woman is spurred on by the family of the uncle to leave, under the pretense of eliminating potential scandals, what would the rest of the world think when they learn the poet’s mistress is in the wake as well? The way the protagonist describes the relatives, ‘…a horde of black-clad women, the sisters and cousins of the poet…they had the same deep eye-sockets and hollow cheekbones…which on them suggested t. b. ,’ it’s as if she’s describing a flock of vultures, predatory in nature. It’s interesting to note the difference between the friends and the relatives at the wake.

The relatives go to Aunt Sophia, while the friends flock towards the other. The friends are the people who are more likely to have seen more of the poet during the last ten years, who have known him even more than his own flesh and blood and who have recognized the second woman as his wife than Aunt Sophia. What the relatives had instigated is sort of a competition to show who’s the chieftest mourner, hence the title. To whom would be the honor to be introduced as the poet’s wife at the wake.

From her response, we learn that the woman is even financially more

upscale than the poet, so her motive for staying with him out of material gain is out of the question. In fact, she’s the one who sold her jewels in order to pay for his medical fees. And she steps out of the parlor not just to give way to Aunt Sophia’s relatives and their demands but to show her grace—she does not need to introduce herself as his wife to important dignitaries to show how much she truly loved him. At the last paragraph, it’s implied how the protagonist is sympathetic to her plight with this selection, ‘The mascara had indeed run down her cheeks.

But somehow it wasn’t funny at all. ’ The story pokes fun at typical Filipino conventions regarding the ‘kabit’ as compared to the first wife. The roles are reversed here, the second wife has more class and grace compared to the former, she’s shown to have a cleverer disposition and more committed to the husband. And as the protagonist have noticed in her uncle’s expression in his coffin, ‘…the faintest trace of his somber smile still on his face,’, it implies that her uncle died happy and at peace, in the company of the la mujer esa, the other woman.