skills as a stud. How Tomás accumulated his gold pieces is not revealed. What is told is that he has buried the gold because he does not trust banks, and he borrows money from other people and never repays them. He is so stingy that he never gives Antonia any money for food or for the children’s education.

Despite their varying circumstances, Clarisa and Antonia are left with no money in their pockets, no food on their tables, and no clothes for their children except through their own efforts of working menial jobs. With this rendition of hardships, it is not difficult for readers to conclude that the patience and understanding that both women are forced to practice are suitable qualifications to classify them in the realm of saints. Allende, in the story ‘‘The Gold of Tomás Vargas,’’ leaves this declaration of saintliness solely in the hands of the readers. She lists the hardships that Antonia suffers, including the fact that she has aged prematurely, has lost her teeth, has experienced several miscarriages, works three jobs, and is often physically beaten by her husband. The narrator never even hints at the fact that Antonia is in any way holy.

This theme of saintliness, however, is fully exposed in the story ‘‘Clarisa.’’ Allende does not hesitate to inform the reader of her belief. As a matter of fact, she comes right out and states it in the opening paragraphs: ‘‘Over the course of a long lifetime she [Clarisa] had come to be considered a saint.’’ Clarisa is not a ‘‘cathedral’’ saint, one sanctioned by the church for her great miracles, but rather she is a more humble saint. She is the kind of saint who performs practical miracles, like curing hangovers, ‘‘or problems with the draft, or a siege of loneliness,’’ acts that the reader can imagine any good mother performing. Antonia too shows signs of saintliness, if not for the community in general, at least for those who live under her roof. For although Antonia is disgusted at first and tries to dismiss the presence of the new intruder in her household, she comes to embrace and care for Concha Díaz, Tomás Vargas’s pregnant concubine.

As Concha intrudes into Antonia’s life and figuratively holds Antonia hostage, so too does a thief break into Clarisa’s house and hold her at knifepoint, demanding all her money. Clarisa, unlike Antonia, immediately laughs at the intruder and tells him that she will give him all the money that she has. She tells him to put away his knife so that he does not hurt any one; then she sends him home, after serving him tea. Although Antonia is a little slower in inviting Concha into her home and life, when she does open up to her, she gives herself fully over to the young woman. At first, Antonia throws a fit at the girl’s arrival, but it is to no avail. Then she tries to ignore the pregnant mistress of her husband. It is not until Concha starts to grow so sick that Antonia fears her death that her heart begins to turn. It is interesting to note, however, that Antonia’s first thought is not for the girl, to whom she cannot yet relate, but rather to the mother of Concha. ‘‘It’s not that I care, none of this is any of my affair,’’ Antonia says, ‘‘but what will I tell her mother if she [Concha] dies on me?’’ At this point, Antonia does not see Concha as a mother figure. Concha is still the mistress, the other woman. However, motherhood itself binds Antonia to Concha’s own mother, even though Antonia has never met the woman. This bond to motherhood is what eventually opens Antonia’s heart to Concha, for when Concha gives birth, the entire household environment changes.

Of course, motherhood has a strong presence in Clarisa’s story, too. Although she gives birth to two children who will never be independent of her, two children who will never fully understand all the elements of life, she ‘‘considered them pure souls immune to evil, and all her relations with them were marked by affection.’’ Clarisa, the narrator suggests, was so optimistic about life that she became pregnant twice again. With her third and fourth births, she gained two very healthy sons, for which she was grateful merely for the fact that they would be able to take care of their older siblings upon her own demise. The narrator also implies that everything in Clarisa’s life, except for the constant scrambling for food, of course, takes a turn for the better upon the births of her second set of sons.

Antonia’s life also takes a turn as she begins to see Concha less as a threat and more as a woman, a potential mother. ‘‘The other woman’s misery forced Antonia Sierra to relive portions of her youth, her first pregnancy, and similar outrages she had lived through. In spite of herself, she wanted Concha Díaz’s future to be less dismal than her own.’’ This statement marks the beginning of compassion in Antonia’s heart for Concha, and from this point, ‘‘she began to treat her [Concha] like a daughter who had gone wrong.’’

Through Antonia’s benevolence, Concha too learns to give. Antonia often comes home and finds that Concha has cleaned the house and prepared dinner. Shortly after, Antonia finds herself rushing home from work so that she can care for Concha in the final stages of her pregnancy. Upon the birth of Concha’s child, Antonia shows the baby off ‘‘with a grandmother’s ebullience.’’ It is also with the birth of the child that Antonia finds her voice and confronts her husband, ‘‘determined for the first time in her life to keep the old vulture from getting his way.’’ Although she had not been able to find the strength to defend herself for her own children’s sake, Antonia is imbued with power upon becoming a surrogate grandmother, the grand matriarch. As the narrator states, ‘‘Things changed after that.’’

Tomás Vargas’s downfall was mostly his own fault. His pride, false assurance, and greed led him to the circumstances that would begin his descent. His wife and mistress, however, were responsible, although obliquely, for his death. How they knew where he had buried his gold is not revealed. It is not known if Antonia knew all along but did not have to audacity to dig it up and use it for her family. What is known is that once Antonia found her voice, she also found it within her capacity to discover the hidden cache and use it. Did she know that this would lead to her husband’s death? The narrator does not answer this question. All that is known is that upon Tomás Vargas’s demise, Antonia and Concha apparently live happily ever after. They are easily forgiven for their theft, for the wealth that Tomás hid from them was rightly theirs. Since they did not have a direct hand in his death, they are easily cheered for their courageous enterprise. Their courage came to them not merely for themselves but rather as a direct result of being mothers.

The twist in Clarisa’s story differs slightly, but also hinges on motherhood. Throughout the story Allende exposes hints as to the final outcome, but it is easy for the reader to overlook them as Allende hides them very craftily. The reader is introduced to Clarisa through the narrator’s memories of having met Clarisa at the house of a prostitute, where the narrator worked as a housemaid. Clarisa was a healer and often came to the prostitute’s home to relieve the pain in her back. While laying her hands on her, Clarisa ‘‘would rummage about’’ in the prostitute’s soul ‘‘with the hope of turning her life around and leading her along the path of righteousness.’’ With this backdrop, Clarisa once again is painted in the glow of a saint, a healing kind of saint, this time. It is only upon her deathbed that the narrator finds out that quite contrary to this holy image, Clarisa, herself, upon a few occasions, wandered down a path that was not so righteous.

Most of Clarisa’s paths were very moral. She often went to the homes of the rich and powerful people in her town to convince them to give money to the poor. One such person was Congressman Diego Cienfuegos, known as one of the ‘‘incorruptible politicians’’ in Clarisa’s country. After wheedling a donation from him, the narrator comments, ‘‘That was the beginning of a discreet friendship that was to cost the politician many sleepless nights and many donations.’’ This is the first hint of Clarisa’s other-than-saintly side. The next clue follows, a couple of paragraphs later: ‘‘Neither the husband interred in the mausoleum of his room nor the debilitating hours of her daily labors prevented Clarisa’s becoming pregnant again.’’

No one questioned the coincidence of Clarisa having borne two sets of children who bore little resemblance to one another. She was, after all, considered a saint. Upon her deathbed, however, she confides in the narrator, telling her that it would come as a great surprise to all her friends if she did not go to heaven, as they expected, but rather went to hell. The narrator cannot imagine what horrible deed Clarisa might have been guilty of to warrant such an afterlife sentence. The answer comes, however, upon the arrival of an unexpected guest on the eve of Clarisa’s death.

‘‘About ten that morning, a blue automobile with Congressional plates stopped before the house,’’ and out steps an elderly gentleman, whom the crowd recognizes as none other than Diego Cienfuegos, who has now become a national hero. When the narrator sees the younger set of Clarisa’s sons assist the elder statesman up the stairs, she notices their resemblance. ‘‘The three men had the same bearing, the same profile, the same deliberate assurance, the same wise eyes and firm hands.’’ Later, when the narrator confronts the dying Clarisa, asking her if the congressman was indeed the father of her second set of sons, the sin that might be responsible for sending Clarisa to hell, Clarisa responds, ‘‘that wasn’t a sin, child, just a little boost to help God balance the scales of destiny.’’

In Clarisa’s mind, as in Antonia’s, the need to balance the scales of destiny in favor of the children, is the motivating force in their lives. Clarisa needed to find benefactors for her older children. She chose the congressman to sire her third and fourth sons for his strength, good heart, and strong will. She could not depend on her husband to leave anything behind of benefit, so she took matters into her own hands.

In Allende’s other story, Antonia suffered her husband until she finally awoke and gained a clear vision of her life through Concha. She, too, could not depend on her husband for support, so she did what she had to do to find security for the future. For the sake of her children, she stole her husband’s gold and ‘‘made their way out of poverty and started off down the road to prosperity.’’

Thus, through the combination of these stories, Allende fully develops her concept of motherhood, the strength that is required to raise children as well as the sacrifice that must often be made to maintain them. In her stories, both Clarisa and Antonia find the courage and understanding to make their way through what, at times, appears as insurmountable challenges. The ways of these mothers may not be conventional, but they work.

Source: Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on ‘‘The Gold of Tomás Vargas,’’ in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

Allende goes to great lengths to paint Vargas as a despicable character and to do so, she relies on a very old idea, the seven deadly sins—pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth. The seven deadly sins were identified by the first Christian monks and were used to great effect in the European Middle Ages. There, they were incorporated into both church sermons and the arts—including the morality play, an allegorical play in which a moral lesson is taught, and where specific characters represent moral qualities. In ‘‘The Gold of Tomás Vargas,’’ however, the title character embodies all of the seven deadly sins.

Allende set ‘‘The Gold of Tomás Vargas’’ in the fictional village of Agua Santa, which she intended to exist in whatever time or place the reader saw fit. This indeterminate nature of setting gives the story the feeling of a fable, a moral tale that concerns extraordinary events, which are often derived from legend or myth. Indeed, with its moral message, the story reads like a fable. The prized gold of a greedy and adulterous wife-beater is secretly stolen by the man’s wife and concubine, leading to the man’s murder when he is forced to default on a gambling debt. However, in traditional fables, the moral issue is clearly defined and characters display either distinctly evil or distinctly good characteristics. In ‘‘The Gold of Tomás Vargas,’’ however, the entire town of Agua Santa is morally ambiguous. Although Vargas is universally hated for his immoral behavior, nobody makes him stop because the town has only one morally reprehensible offense: ‘‘they could tolerate a man who mistreated his family, a man who was lazy and a troublemaker, who never paid back money he borrowed, but gambling debts were sacred.’’

This lack of a moral enforcement code in the town gives Vargas license to live a very immoral lifestyle without fear of serious retribution. He uses his moral freedom to indulge in many sins and his proclamation that this is a good way to live often subverts the attempts of the town’s priest, who preaches a moral lifestyle: ‘‘When he was drunk he shouted the joys of bigamy to the four winds, and for several Sundays the priest would have to rebut that sacrilege from the pulpit.’’ The priest is worried that this idea might catch on, causing his ‘‘many years of preaching the Christian virtue of monogamy’’ to be wiped out. The fact that Allende has Vargas struggle against a Christian priest is very symbolic. Vargas is obviously one of the main evil influences on the town, and somebody who is not afraid to indulge in all seven of the sins that Christians have identified as deadly.

Greed is the most apparent of Vargas’s sins. His gold nuggets, which are ‘‘buried in a safe hiding place,’’ corrupt his behavior. He is so terrified of losing his fortune that he keeps the gold buried, even when others start to exchange their ‘‘gold and silver coins’’ for paper money and start to trust the new bank system. As it turns out, Vargas is right for not giving up his gold at this point since the worth of the paper money diminishes and many lose their fortunes. However, as Allende’s narration notes, ‘‘his good fortune did nothing to mitigate his miserliness or his scrounging.’’ Vargas is wealthy from his buried gold, but instead of digging it up to pay for his expenses, he instead ‘‘borrowed money with no intention of paying it back.’’ In addition, his greed forces his children to go hungry and his wife to wear rags, and almost impacts his children’s education, since he ‘‘refused to pay the fees for his children’s schooling.’’ Fortunately, the schoolteacher donates her time to the children for free.

Vargas also demonstrates the sin of sloth, or laziness. In addition to his failure to provide for his family from his buried gold or from the money he borrows, Vargas also refuses to work, which prompts Antonia Sierra, his wife, to pick up his slack. For Antonia, the days are long, since ‘‘besides caring for her children and looking after the garden and the hens, she earned a few pesos by cooking lunch for the police, taking in washing, and cleaning the school.’’ At one point, after Concha has had her baby, ‘‘things went from bad to worse, and Concha also had to go out and work.’’ The two women end up supporting Vargas and the children, but he never works. Instead, he spends his time at the tavern or at gambling matches where ‘‘he could spend hours observing a game of dominoes.’’

At these gambling matches, Vargas’s actions demonstrate the envy that he has for others who have won money gambling. Because he is so afraid of losing his buried gold, ‘‘Vargas never bet, but he liked to watch the players. . . . he was the first to pick a spot at the cockfights.’’ In addition to watching actual gambling matches, Vargas is so envious of others’ winning money that he cannot stop himself from listening ‘‘to the announcement of the lottery winners over the radio, even though he never bought a ticket.’’

Vargas is also an angry man, and takes out his wrath on his wife and children frequently. When talking about his wife, Allende notes that ‘‘there were times that her body was covered with black-and-blue marks; no one had to ask, all Agua Santa knew about the abuse she took from her husband.’’ Vargas is a violent man, and even though he does not provide for his family either through his gold or through working to make money, he still feels justified in beating his wife. At one point in the story, Vargas and Antonia face off, and Vargas ‘‘made a move to whip off his belt to give her the usual thrashing.’’ However, when Antonia counters her husband’s wrath with her own ‘‘ferocity,’’ he backs down.

This does not diminish his feelings of lust. Vargas has had six children with Antonia, and in his old age is still adulterous. In his more drunken moments, he has ‘‘broadcast at the top of his lungs the names of all the girls he had seduced and all the bastards who carried his blood.’’ Whether or not his legendary conquests are true—Allende notes that ‘‘if he were to be believed, he had sired at least three hundred’’ children—Vargas does have at least one concubine, Concha. When she comes to town carrying his baby, Antonia is outraged, but Vargas does not pay too much attention because Concha becomes another outlet for his amorous attentions. Even while he sleeps, Vargas is ‘‘cuddling the girl.’’ However, when his lust goes too far and he tries to ‘‘coax Concha . . . back to his hammock,’’ even before the scars from her cesarean section have healed, both Antonia and Concha stand up to him. When the two women ‘‘nipped his manly impulses in the bud,’’ he finds solace with ‘‘the girls in the whorehouse.’’

One other consequence of Antonia and Concha standing up to Vargas is that his pride is wounded. Vargas ‘‘took great pride in being the most macho macho in the region, as he bellowed in the plaza every time he went off his head with drink.’’ When the two women stand up to him, Vargas makes the mistake of telling the prostitutes about it, and they tell ‘‘everyone that Vargas could not cut the mustard anymore and that his bragging about being such a stud was pure swagger.’’ Because of this damage to his reputation, Vargas turns to gambling. In addition to the lure of ‘‘easy money,’’ Vargas hopes that, by ‘‘getting rich at one lucky stroke,’’ he can use this ‘‘illusory projection of that triumph’’ to mend his wounded pride. He figures that if he is rich, then people will overlook the treatment he received from the two women and perhaps he can attract other women with his newfound money.

Even if he were to win more money, Vargas is prone to gluttony so he would probably waste it. Although his family is poor and suffers, Vargas uses the little money he is able to borrow to buy ‘‘Panama hats’’ and smoke ‘‘expensive cigars.’’ However, gluttony mainly manifests itself in Vargas’s drinking. Throughout the story, Vargas is depicted as drunk or drinking. This common occurrence often prompts Vargas’s neighbors to come to Halabí, the only one who can shame Vargas, ‘‘when they suspected that Vargas was drunk and out of control.’’ In fact, Vargas’s drinking problem is so pronounced that, when Concha comes into Halabí’s store and breaks down, telling him that she wants to see Vargas, Halabí ‘‘sent someone to fetch him from the tavern.’’

Even when Vargas is not drunk, he can use his reputation as a drunkard to get out of situations that he does not like, such as when he ‘‘turned a deaf ear and pretended he was drunker than usual,’’ when he does not want to pay for Concha’s hospital bills. In the end, although all of Vargas’s sins contribute to his downfall, it is his gluttonous need for alcohol that kills him. After Vargas gets over his delusional fever, he realizes that the Lieutenant will probably kill him for not being able to pay his gambling debt. As a result, ‘‘he did not venture out for several days.’’ However, ‘‘his habit of dissipation,’’ or excessive drinking, ‘‘was stronger than his prudence, so he took his Panama hat and, still shaky and frightened, went down to the tavern.’’ This proves to be Vargas’s fatal mistake, since ‘‘he did not return that night,’’ and his ‘‘mutilated body’’ is found two days later.

As the above examples show, Vargas embodies all seven of the deadly sins, unlike traditional moral tales, in which a specific character will often embody one moral value, while another specific character will embody a different moral value. However, in a town where gambling debts are the only unforgivable offense, Vargas is not the only one who indulges in the deadly sins. Vargas is murdered, presumably by the Lieutenant who is wrathful over Vargas’s defaulting on the debt. Also, Halabí becomes ‘‘choked with righteous wrath’’ every time he hears that Vargas is beating his family. Although it may be righteous, it is still wrath. Vargas’s wife, Antonia, has a ‘‘ferocious pride that arrested any overture of pity.’’ This pride threatens at times to prevent her children from getting the vitamins and other items they need to remain healthy. Others who visit the town also display sinful qualities, such as the prison guards, who indulge in their lust: ‘‘Saturdays the guards from Santa María Prison came to town to visit the whorehouse.’’ In fact, the town is so morally ambiguous that Allende even describes the vegetation that surrounds it as ‘‘gluttonous.’’ These additional examples of the seven deadly sins in other characters and in the town itself help to underscore Allende’s depiction of Vargas as the ultimate sinner and Agua Santa as the ultimate haven for sin.

Source: Ryan D. Poquette, Critical Essay on ‘‘The Gold of Tomás Vargas,’’ in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.