Ramona

I had to do this for my History of California class. I got a 94%. All Rights Reserved.

   Ramona published in 1988 by Helen Hunt Jackson is full of ethnic resolutions and conflicts, gender relations, love, death, determination, wild imaginations, and discrimination of Indians, Whites, and Mexicans. The U. S treatment of Californios was horrible. The Government drove them out of their lands, quickly taking their place, and felt entitled to do as they pleased. Indians had no voice against the new laws which, if a person didn't have the evidence to support their right of land possession, then it would be taken. Temecula is an example of this action. It was an Indian run village of at least two hundred people, but they were forced out by white men with guns just because a court in San Francisco said it was their right by law. In order to pay the restitution fee's, the white men also took their cattle and sheep, leaving the Indians with nothing. 'They're Americans—eight or ten of them. They all got together and brought a suit, they call it, up in San Francisco; and it was decided in the court that they owned all our land' (Jackson Chapter Fourteen). In a bid of revenge, the Indians knocked down the walls of their homes, and destroyed many other items so the whites couldn't use them. Later in the book Alessandro goes back home only to see a white family living in his old house and he hears a small bit of conversation between them about the wife feeling bad about them driving the Indians out of their homes, "It's bad enough to take their houses this way!", (Jackson Chapter Seven) but the husband, who's a drunkard, shuts her up.

The story line takes place after the Mexican American War where a child named Ramona faces racial judgement for being half Mexican and half Indian. Given up by a good for nothing father, Ramona is taken in by his ex wife who forsake him for another man. Unfortunately, she dies, leaving instructions to her sister, with a guideline to give her old gowns and jewels to Ramona when she marries someone worthy. This is a huge dilemma for the sister, Senora Gonzaga Moreno, later in the book due to how much she hates Ramona because of her blood heritage. "If the child were pure Indian, I would like it better," she said. "I like not these crosses. It is the worst, and not the best of each, that remains." (Jackson Chapter Three).

   Despite the Senora being a religious person, she discriminates Indians as poor beggars who are only good enough to be farm hands and nothing more. She hates the White American's who came in to take the land her General husband had procured from Governor Pio Fico as a gift. Forty miles in every direction was given to them but when the U.S government became involved they deemed that not all the land was her right to own. Even though she was left with a generous size of land the Senora felt wronged and poor. 'They were lands which had belonged to the Bonaventura Mission' (Jackson Chapter Two). In retaliation the Senora Moreno had huge wooden crosses built on top of the rolling hills on the remaining land so that people passing by on the newly built road behind the house could see, "That the heretics may know, when they go by, that they are on the estate of a good Catholic," (Jackson, Chapter Two).

   Felipe Moreno, son of the Senora, "is the man of the estate" when in reality it is the Senora who has the most say so. She does listen to her son when he puts his foot down, which is very rare, and when he is passionate about something. Senora Moreno absolutely loves her son and would do anything for him except love Ramona. 'Lived always in the Senora's house as a daughter, tended and attended equally with the adored Felipe' (Jackson Chapter Three). Felipe is first introduced as an ill person, probably trying to convey to the reader how cowardly he actually can be, and only gets better with the help of a lowly Indian. At the first note', of Alessandro singing, 'Felipe became suddenly quiet, evidently listening' (Jackson Chapter Six). His voice lulled him out a fever.

   He even admits that 'he had acquired the habit of keeping to himself most of the things he thought and felt about his little playmate sister,—a dangerous habit, out of which were slowly ripening bitter fruits for the Senora's gathering in later years' (Jackson Chapter Three) and this even foreshadows what happens toward the end of the book.