Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and graphic violence.

All of the female characters depicted in the novel are full of ambitions and desires: None of them are content with the fairly circumscribed roles readily available to them. However, both storylines depict tragic consequences when women aspire to determine their own fates. That this is true at two very different moments in history suggests the continuity of the struggles women experience when trying to pursue what they want, whether that is power, influence, fame, or love.

All three of the novel’s major female characters, as well as Salome’s mother, Herodias, reject the marriages of convenience that society dictates they pursue. Nancy and Vera both extricate themselves from romantic relationships because they feel bored and dissatisfied: Nancy briefly attempts to embody the idealized housewife but finds that she “[is] dissatisfied in their little house with their multitude of appliances [while] she [has] put her head down, completed her chores, cooked the meals, and smiled” (58). Vera explains that she broke off her engagement to a man in Mexico because “he kissed [her] goodbye. And [she] realized [she] felt nothing at all” (177).