Meaningful Passage

A meaningful passage that I remember the most is one where Jose the son begins to act like a dictator and treats the people of Macondo unjustly. Consequently, his mother Ursula beats him for what he did to the village. The part of the book was memorable to me because of the thought of a woman in essence being in charge of a whole village. It interested me because it reminded me of how matriarchal my family is. In a house filled with women of all ages, one would believe that my brother would slowly become the provider for the family as well as the protector. Contrary to popular belief, each of the women, my mother and my grandmother, held their own ground and pulled their own weight plus mine and my brother's. At times, he thought that he could be the leader of the household and when he acted irrationally my mother reprimanded him in ways similar to Ursula's. The funny thing about it all is that people of the male persuasion try to fit this stereotype of being aggressive, controlling and intimidating when in all actuality they may be more submissive than their female counterparts. My question is that since the book was written in the 1970s how was that part of the book taken by the readers of that time era. If rejected, what did people do to dissuade others from reading this kind of idea and if accepted was it a big deal. Why or not?