Of Women and Salt

(María Isabel, Camagüey, 1866)

The novel opens with the story of María Isabel, a cigar roller in the small factory Porteños y Gómez. María lives with her mother, Aurelia. María’s father passed away shortly before the start of the novel. After his death, Aurelia had many suitors who offered to care for the family, but she declined their offers. María is single and has no aspirations to marry. Cigar rolling is traditionally a man’s job, and María is the only woman who works in the factory. She makes half the wages the men do and knows that they resent her. As this particular day begins, the factory lector, Antonio, begins the morning by reading the workers a letter from La Aurora, a newspaper sympathetic to Cuban revolutionaries in their bid for independence from Spain. The letter extols the virtues of the Cuban population and its workers “whose aspirations to such knowledge—science, literature, and moral principle—fuel Cuba’s progress” (3). María returns home for lunch to find her mother exhausted from working in the fields and tries to get her to rest. In the factory, after lunch, Antonio reads from novels, and he’s currently reading from Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo.