Character Analysis
A Woman with an Axe to Grind
Victoria Guzmán does not like Santiago. We understand. His father took her virginity, and it looks like Santiago is planning the same thing with her daughter. But he's not going to do it if she has anything to say about it.
Victoria Guzmán is interesting because she is one of the few female characters in the novel that fights against the inevitable. Many of the characters give in to what they consider to be fate. It would be easy for her to think that the cycle started by Santiago's father is one that will continue forever, but instead she fights against the system, even when her daughter doesn't:
The girl, as yet a bit untamed, seemed overwhelmed by the drive of her glands. Santiago Nasar grabbed her by the wrist when she came to take the empty mug from him. "The time has come for you to be tamed," he told her. Victoria Guzman showed him the bloody knife. "Let go of her, white man," she ordered him seriously. "You won't have a drink of that water as long as I'm alive." (1.11)
Think about it—she's standing up to a man, and not just any man, but her rich employer. That takes some guts. She's willing to fight against fate, even when her daughter isn't.
Victoria is also interesting because she is one of the few characters that we are certain is lying. We are pretty sure many of the other characters are lying, but we have no evidence. On the other hand Victoria's own daughter rats her out:
Victoria Guzman, for her part, had been categorical with her answer that neither she nor her daughter knew that the men were waiting for Santiago Nasar to kill him. But in the course of her years she admitted that both knew it when he came into the kitchen to have his coffee. They had been told it by a woman who had passed by after five o'clock to beg a bit of milk, and who in addition had revealed the motives and the place where they were waiting. "I didn't warn him because I thought it was drunkards' talk," she told me. Nevertheless, Divina Flor confessed to me on a later visit, after her mother had died, that the latter hadn't said anything to Santiago Nasar because in the depths of her heart she wanted them to kill him. (1.20)
Those are a lot of lies. But the lies themselves are not interesting.
What's interesting is that Victoria Guzmán is the only person who has a completely understandable and transparent motive for her actions. She hates Santiago because he wants to have sex with her daughter. She didn't warn him because she wanted him to die. No mystery there. Unlike almost everyone else in the novel, Victoria Guzmán is a totally open book, which is a breath of fresh air in a novel full of mystery.