Angela Vicario was the youngest daughter of a family of scant resources.

Her father, Poncio Vicario,

was a poor man's goldsmith, and he'd lost his sight from doing so much fine work in gold in order to maintain
the honour of the house. Pure sima del Carmen, her mother, had been a schoolteacher until she married for
ever. Her meek and somewhat afflicted look hid the strength of her character quite well. "She looked like a
nun," my wife Mercedes recalls. She devoted herself with such spirit of sacrifice to the care of her husband and
the rearing of her children that at times one forgot she still existed. The two oldest daughters had married very
late. In addition to the twins, there was a middle daughter who had died of nighttime fevers, and two years later
they were still observing a mourning that was relaxed inside the house but rigorous on the street. The brothers
were brought up to be men. The girls had been reared to get married. They knew how to do screen embroidery,
sew by machine, weave bone lace, wash and iron, make artificial flowers and fancy candy, and write
engagement announcements. Unlike other girls of the time, who had neglected the cult of death, the four were
past mistresses in the ancient science of sitting up with the ill, comforting the dying, and enshrouding the dead.
The only thing that my mother reproached them for was the custom of combing their hair before sleeping.
"Girls," she would tell them, "don't comb your hair at night; you'll slow down seafarers." Except for that, she
thought there were no better-reared daughters. "They're perfect," she was frequently heard to say. "Any man
will be happy with them because they've been raised to suffer." Yet it was difficult for the men who married
the two eldest to break the circle, because they always went together everywhere, and they organised dances
for women only and were predisposed to find hidden intentions in the designs of men. (30-32)