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Howard Doyle
Virgil is Howard’s only son, and Catalina’s husband. Though he would typically inherit his family’s estate after Howard’s death, his father’s immortality robs him of that prize. Virgil therefore secretly plots to allow his father to die, which would leave him with total authority over High Place and the gloom. Like his father, Virgil believes that white men are genetically superior and that a woman’s duty is marriage and mothering. He is more suave than his father, however, and he charms Catalina into marrying him, and then he traps her in High Place. Even Noemí often succumbs to Virgil’s dashing good looks—she compares him to the wealthy men she would often meet at parties in Mexico City: charming and desirous, but scornful of women who contradict him. The fact the Noemí has moments of desire for Virgil indicates a problem with societies that repress women’s sexuality: it makes it difficult to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy attitudes towards sex and desire, leaving women vulnerable to manipulation by men like Virgil. In totality Virgil represents a class of men more modern than his father, those who benefited from the colonial system and carry old prejudices into the contemporary age.
Virgil Quotes in Mexican Gothic
The Mexican Gothic quotes below are all either spoken by Virgil or refer to Virgil. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
He reminded her of a fellow she’d danced with at a party the previous summer. They had been having fun, briskly stepping to a danzón, and then came time for the ballads. During “Some Enchanted Evening” the man held her far too tightly and tried to kiss her. She turned her head, and when she looked at him again there was pure, dark mockery across his features.
Noemí stared back at Virgil, and he stared at her with that same sort of mockery: a bitter, ugly stare.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8
Quotes
“I have seen the world, and in seeing it I’ve noticed people seem bound to their vices. Take a walk around any tenement and you’ll see the same sort of faces, the same sort of expressions on those faces, and the same sort of people. You can’t remove whatever taint they carry with hygiene campaigns. There are fit and unfit people.”
Of course he had a point. Catalina was his wife, and he was the one who could make choices for her. Why, Mexican women couldn’t even vote. What could Noemí say? What could she do in such a situation? Perhaps it would be best if her father intervened. If he came down here. A man would command more respect. But no, it was as she said: she wasn’t going to back down.
Chapter 13
Quotes
“When the mine was open, he would have been glad to see Catalina married to me. Back then I would have been worthy. He wouldn’t have thought me inconsequential. It must still irk him, and you, to know Catalina picked me. Well, I’m no two-bit fortune hunter, I’m a Doyle. It would be good of you to remember that.”
Chapter 17
Quotes
She did not wish to blush in front of him. To turn crimson like an idiot in front of a man who wielded such meticulous hostility toward her. But she thought of his mouth on hers and his hands on her thighs, like it had been in the dream, and an electric thrill ran down her spine. That night, that dream, it had felt like desire, danger, and scandals, and all the secrets her body and her eager mind quietly coveted.
Get the entire Mexican Gothic LitChart as a printable PDF.
Virgil Quotes in Mexican Gothic
The Mexican Gothic quotes below are all either spoken by Virgil or refer to Virgil. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
He reminded her of a fellow she’d danced with at a party the previous summer. They had been having fun, briskly stepping to a danzón, and then came time for the ballads. During “Some Enchanted Evening” the man held her far too tightly and tried to kiss her. She turned her head, and when she looked at him again there was pure, dark mockery across his features.
Noemí stared back at Virgil, and he stared at her with that same sort of mockery: a bitter, ugly stare.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8
Quotes
“I have seen the world, and in seeing it I’ve noticed people seem bound to their vices. Take a walk around any tenement and you’ll see the same sort of faces, the same sort of expressions on those faces, and the same sort of people. You can’t remove whatever taint they carry with hygiene campaigns. There are fit and unfit people.”
Of course he had a point. Catalina was his wife, and he was the one who could make choices for her. Why, Mexican women couldn’t even vote. What could Noemí say? What could she do in such a situation? Perhaps it would be best if her father intervened. If he came down here. A man would command more respect. But no, it was as she said: she wasn’t going to back down.
Chapter 13
Quotes
“When the mine was open, he would have been glad to see Catalina married to me. Back then I would have been worthy. He wouldn’t have thought me inconsequential. It must still irk him, and you, to know Catalina picked me. Well, I’m no two-bit fortune hunter, I’m a Doyle. It would be good of you to remember that.”
Chapter 17
Quotes
She did not wish to blush in front of him. To turn crimson like an idiot in front of a man who wielded such meticulous hostility toward her. But she thought of his mouth on hers and his hands on her thighs, like it had been in the dream, and an electric thrill ran down her spine. That night, that dream, it had felt like desire, danger, and scandals, and all the secrets her body and her eager mind quietly coveted.
