The Barbarian Nurseries

“Araceli enjoyed her solitude, her apartness from the world, and she liked to think of working for the Torres-Thompson family as a kind of self-imposed exile from her previous, directionless life in Mexico City. But every now and then she wanted to share the pleasures of this solitude with someone and step outside her silent California existence, into one of her alternate daydream lives.”

This description perfectly captures Araceli’s character. She is quiet and keeps herself carefully out of other people’s lives, due in part to the trauma she is trying to escape by leaving Mexico City. However, part of her longs for another life and dreams of something else. At the outset of the novel, she is unable to see how she can accomplish these dreams. She learns during her journey that she can dream, she can still be amazed, and she is strong enough to go after what she wants.

“But they hadn’t even bothered asking Araceli what she thought and had simply foisted more work upon her. Araceli saw her standing in the world with a new and startling clarity. She lived with English-speaking strangers, high on a hill alone with huge windows and the smell of solvents and lacked the will to escape what she had become. She quietly accepted the Torres-Thompsons’ money and the room they gave her, and they felt free to make her do anything they asked, expecting her to adapt to their habits and idiosyncrasies, holding babies, supervising boys at the park, and probably more things.” 

Araceli recognizes the issue of the racial divide in the Torres-Thompson household (and, by extension, much of Californian society) and puts words to the feelings for the first time. She realizes that the parents, consciously or subconsciously, view her just as “the help,” and possibly interchangeable with Guadalupe. They see her as a moldable savage. Interestingly, Araceli tends to view the family with the same distance and apartness.

“What have they done to each other, these people? Araceli felt the need to restore order and understood that the violence in the room might spin into something unspeakable were it not for her presence. Today I am the civilized one and they are the savages. They have taken the living room I have worked so hard to give the sparkle of a museum and they have transformed it into a wrestling ring.” 

One of the strongest references to the “barbarians” in the title, Araceli witnesses the aftermath of Scott and Maureen’s fight and sees them as “savages.” This further emphasizes the distance Araceli puts between herself and the Torres-Thompsons. It also calls to light how Scott and Maureen’s failure to communicate has led to savage violence; without being able to communicate, they have become