novel essay source

8/7/2019 Novel Essay Source

1/13

The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

University of Wisconsin Presshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1208317 .

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uwisc . .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of Wisconsin Press and The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System arecollaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Contemporary Literature.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uwischttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1208317?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uwischttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uwischttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1208317?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uwisc


2/13


3/13

by right-wing conspirators of an uncle on her father's side, PresidentSalvador Allende.

The Latin American celebration of reality in all literary formsencompasses a wide range of motifs. In addition to many overt andcovert forms of aggression, one finds oases of lyricism, intensepaternal, maternal, filial, marital, and extramarital elationships, bizarreironies (in Miguel Angel Asturias's best-known novel, El seniorPresidente [Mr. President], the Sefior Presidente dutifully vomits intoa chamber pot that has a seal of the Republic encrusted on the bottom),festivals of the senses, authoritarian and religious constrictions, super-natural events (inherited and shared as well as invented), and ghostlyapparitions. Garcia Marquez's huge success with One Hundred Years

of Solitude was mainly due to his skill in incorporating all these motifsin a fictional yet very real space. When he came to Mexico in 1938,Andre Breton is reported to have remarked that Mexican life was sur-realistic; he was referring to its colors, forms, sounds, and energies,not to some abstracted construction or deconstruction of his own.Garcia Marquez has testified more than once that virtually all his magi-cal elements are drawn from everyday Colombian or Latin Americanreality, from characters and happenings that were always verisimilar

enough for someone not only to have believed but to have talked aboutand elaborated on beforehand. Isabel Allende herself recently said that"reality is always richer than anything one can dream."2

Richer, and just as turbulent. It invites storytelling and sharpenshistorical awareness, for history is something that needs constantlyto be deciphered through literature probably its best instrument. ThePeruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has written:

Why is it that in Peruiand other Latin American countries writers have to

be basicallypoliticians, gitators, eformers, ocialcommentators, moralists,instead of creators and artists? The fundamental eason s not to be foundso much n the social condition of our countries r in the problems hey face,as in the fact that literature, or better or worse, has for centuries been theonly effective means of exposing these problems.3

The problems Vargas Llosa refers to are reflected, literarily, in manyways - most strikingly perhaps through the figure of the antihero thatdominates some of the sprightliest Latin American novels of the twen-

tieth century: Garcia Marquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch, Alejo

2"Entrevista" 150.3"La utopia arcaica," Working Paper No. 33, Center of Latin American Studies,

University of Cambridge, 1978, 5; my translation.

544 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE


4/13

Carpentier's Reasons of State (El recurso del metodo), Augusto RoaBastos's Yo el Supremo (I, the Supreme), Carlos Fuentes's The Deathof Artemio Cruz, Demetrio Aguilera Malta's Babelandia (El secuestrodel general), in which military or dictatorial characters determine theatmosphere and course of action. Although Vargas Llosa overempha-sizes in his statement the extraliterary at the expense of the literary(a literary work is always more than a social, moral, or politicalvehicle), books have undeniably been a steadier and more reliablesource of disclosure in Latin America than radio, television, or thepress. Isabel Allende has reminded us, not without irony, of thetyrannical Pinochet regime's uncharacteristic leniency toward litera-ture over the last two or three years:

A poet friend of mine says that since the military doesn't read, it hasn'trealized hat books can be dangerous. So, in Chile, while they censor pressnoticesof the fall of Marcos and Baby Doc, they still sellin bookstores workslikeMissingor Labyrinth, r the books of Antonio

Sk.rmeta,Ariel Dorfman,

and many others who have written on the tragedy of Chile in recent years.4

But of course books are dangerous. Even if, in Chile's currenteconomy, one like The House of the Spirits sells for the equivalent

of a month's salary at the minimum wage,5 they do get read. Theycirculate on loan and in photocopies or mimeograph; they're discussedin informal seminars; they help stimulate clandestine opposition andpreserve the historical memory.

In what circumstances was the novel under consideration written?In the 1986 lecture quoted above, Allende stressed the importance ofthe "moment of history the writer is born into," especially in LatinAmerica, a world of great "struggles and defeats, brutality and magic."Increasingly aware of the New World's five-hundred-year tradition ofviolence, she matured intellectually with her uncle's socialist move-ment and became a novelist at her reactionary grandfather's death.Thus, her book is the celebration of a momentous social struggle inwhich those two figures were principals. Only fictitious names are usedin the story, for places as well as for people, but the implications areobvious: this was to be a composite testimony of many voices (likeOne Hundred Years of Solitude, with which superficial comparisonshave often been made), written with a recent exile's sense of urgency,and a family member's intimacy. The political dispersion of the family

4Isabel Allende, "Writing in Latin America," lecture at the University of theDistrict of Columbia, Washington, D.C., 26 April 1986.

5Allende, "Writing in Latin America."

AL LENDE 545


5/13

she tells about is microcosmic, for contemporary Chilean history isalso one of dispersion, beginning the day after Salvador Allende's elec-tion in 1970 with a complex opposition program that included tech-nical and financial assistance from our Central Intelligence Agencyand State Department and accelerating after September 11, 1973, whenmilitary forces led by General Pinochet carried out their coup d'itat.

Soon after Allende's election, Secretary of State Henry Kissingerdeclared at a National Security Council meeting, "I don't see why wehave to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irre-sponsibility of its own people." In The House of the Spirits PresidentAllende's niece has her principal male character say of the impoverishedtenant farmers at Tres Marias, his country estate, "They're like chil-

dren, they can't handle responsibility."6 A closer and more impetuousfather-figure than the always distant Kissinger, Esteban Trueba wasalso unwilling to stand by and watch. In his paternalized utopia noone would go hungry, everyone would do his assigned work, and allwould learn reading and writing and simple arithmetic that is, enoughto follow simple instructions and read signs, to write brief messages,and to count, y nada mds, "for fear they would fill their minds withideas unsuited to their station and condition."'7 When, near the begin-

ning of the century, Esteban took over the administration of TresMarias - it had been in the family for generations - it was "a lawlessheap of rocks, a no-man's-land" (43). He quickly put things in orderand regimented his tenant farmers; within a year the "heap of rocks"was a lucrative agricultural enterprise.

But behind this organizational rigor was an unbridled tempera-ment, and deep sentimental frustrations. His fiancee, Rosa del Valleof memorable beauty, dies in the first chapter, which is narratedlike several other sections of the story-in first person singular byEsteban Trueba himself. Rosa's death is caused by brandy laced withrat poison from a decanter sent as an anonymous "gift" to her father,a prominent member of the Liberal Party. The extraordinary Rosahad bright green hair and the aura of "a distracted angel." Ensconcedin the white satin of her coffin, she impressed her grieving fiance ashaving been "subtly ransformed into the mermaid she had always been

6Both Esteban Trueba and Henry Kissinger reflected a view that was alreadyprevalent-predominant, more exactly-in the United States toward the end of thenineteenth century: that of constitutive Latin American irresponsibility. See JohnJ. Johnson, Latin America in Caricature (Austin: U of Texas P, 1980), especially,chapters 4 ("The Republics as Children") and 5 ("The Republics as Blacks").

7The House of the Spirits, trans. Magda Bogin (New York: Knopf, 1985) 57.Subsequent references to this edition are included in the text.

546 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE


6/13

in secret" 30). Her autopsy and preparation or viewing are secretlywitnessed by her little sister Clara n a semitraumatic tate, immedi-ately after which Clara enters a nine-year period of unbroken ilence.Her first words will be to announce, n one of the many psychic pre-dictions over her lifetime, that she'll soon be married.

In chapter 2 we are told that not only did Clara, la clarividente,foresee her marriage ut also the identity of her husband-to-be: osa'sfiance, whom she hadn't seen since her sister's uneral and who wasfifteen years her senior. Two months later, to be sure, Esteban visitsthe del Valle residence and immediately ormalizes heir engagement.

The family was to grow n its strange diversity hrough hree gen-erations, but Clara and Esteban would always constitute its vital,antithetical ucleus.The latter embodies privileged ower; he former,humanitarian esistance. History, for Trueba, was paternity andwhenever he situation alled or it - aggression.One of his first ritualsin organizing Tres Marias as a community was to start populating t,ranging hrough he wheatfields n horseback n pursuit of the peasantgirls, raping and impregnating more than a few. Schopenhauer wouldhave found in him a striking case of "the passage of will into visi-bility,"s will - that is - unenlightened by knowledge; impelled, rather,

by an atavistic urge for self-assertion. History was procreation, andthe father's subsequent attempts o deal with the results of procrea-tion. The most troublesome outcome of his sexual escapades n theenvirons f TresMarias wasEsteban Garcia, his natural randson bornof an offspring of Pancha Garcia, his first wheatfield victim. Aftera childhood of deprivation nd growing resentment, he grandson hasnothing but the grandfather's irst name for an inheritance. ince child-hood he had wanted to become a policeman. And he became one.

During he ugly reprisals aken by the military government n theaftermath of the President's death (in a series of obvious allusions othe Pinochet regime's epressions tarting n September, 1973),Garciareappears, having risen to the rank of lieutenant olonel in the politi-cal police. It is he who presides over the interrogation, onfinement,and prolonged orture of his privileged ousin Alba, a university tu-dent who has been active in the socialist underground nd EstebanTrueba's nly recognized randchild. Alba undergoes er torture partlyin trauma, partly n an unconscious state. In the process she's rapedan undisclosed number of times, and in the Epilogue we're old thatone of the culprits s Colonel Garcia. Third in a lineage of strong-

8The World as Will and Idea, trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (Garden City,NJ: Doubleday, 1961) 144.

ALLENDE | 547


7/13

willed women, Alba is the human nstrument hrough which EstebanTrueba s made o pay psychologically or a lifetime of large-and small-scale ransgressions.9 hat s, instead of retaliating n a direct, physicalway against the aged patriarch, Trueba's bastard grandson choosesto punish him through his "legitimate" ounterpart: evengeagainstthe privileged by the underprivileged, gainst he upper-class hild ofaffluence by the peasant-child of want.

The principal ntecedent o this reprisal omes n chapter . Truebais then informed by Jean de Satigny, his daughter Blanca's ffete anddandified suitor, that Blanca is having nighttime trysts. The secretlover, it turns out, is her childhood playmate at Tres Marias, PedroTercero Garcia, who has grown up with revolutionary deas and com-

posesrevolutionary ongsfor the guitar including ne based on a fabletold to him years before by the first Pedro Garcia: once there wasa chicken coop invaded nightly by a fox who stole eggs and ate babychicks; eventually he hens organized, and one night they surroundedthe fox and peckedhim half to death). About three weeks ater EstebanGarcia then a boy of twelve - presents himself and offers to lead hisgrandfather o Pedro Tercero's hiding place in the woods. Agreeingto pay a reward, Trueba ets out with a pistol. Surprised n bed, the

intended victim s still able to leap out, to dodge the only shot Truebagets to fire and, a second later, to disarm his assailant by hurling apieceof firewoodat him. Whereupon rueba eizes an ax and swingsand Pedro Tercero, n a reflex-attempt at self-defense, loses threefingers from his right hand. Shock and loss of blood notwithstand-ing, he rushes rom the cabin and escapes n the dark. Adding literalinsult o literal njury, Trueba hen refuses o pay the boy his promisedreward, slaps him, and snarls, "There's no reward for [double-crossers]!" (177)10

No reward hen. But ultimatelyEsteban Garcia was to obtain oneof sorts. Years ater, at the very moment Senator Trueba of the Con-servative arty was celebrating ithchampagne he Socialistpresident's

9In a symposium at Haverford College on February 28, 1987, Gabriela Morapresented "A Political Reading of Isabel Allende's Novels." It was Professor Mora'scontention that in allowing Trueba to die peacefully in his granddaughter's arms,Allende had weakened the moral foundation of her book. In my view the old manstill pays a heavy personal price for his myopia and his crimes. But more importantly,the average reader gains from his crude performance throughout the story a betterperception of how the authoritarian mentality accommodates criminal methods inits procedures.

I?Magda Bogin translates traidores as "traitors," which is its most frequent mean-ing. But "double-crossers" seems more accurate in Trueba's intended context.

548 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE


8/13

overthrow, "his son Jaime's testicles were being burned with animported cigarette" (315). After refusing to accept his captors' offerof freedom in return for saying on television that the late presidentin a drunken state had committed suicide, Jaime is beaten a secondtime, left with hands and feed bound with barbed wire for two daysand nights, then shot together with several other prisoners in a vacantlot. In the interests of good government and domestic tranquillity,the lot and the cadavers are dynamited immediately after the execu-tion. Two weeks later the Senator is told the circumstances of his son'sdeath, but he refuses to believe the eyewitness account. Only whenJaime appears months later as a ghost, "covered with dried blood andrags, dragging streamers of barbed wire across the waxed parquet

floors" (320), does he realize that he had heard the truth. It is in thispenultimate chapter (13, "The Terror") hat he concludes he had beenwrong and that, after all, "the best way to overthrow Marxism" (320)had not been found.

Systematic oblivion (it never happened; there's no proof), censor-ship ("for reasons of internal order"),1" disinformation (the President,it has been reported, committed suicide in a drunken state), and theinfinite ways of "disappearing" people (such as dynamiting political

prisoners' corpses)are some of the methods

bywhich authoritarian

regimes maintain themselves in power. The Brazilian critic AntonioCallado remarked in 1974 that contemporary Latin America was "fullof new ruins" (e.g., democracy in Uruguay and Chile, the Revolutionin Mexico), that Latin Americans have displayed a peculiar resistanceto "becoming historical," because they're "always trying to start again"amidst a detritus of infringed constitutions and derelict or disabledgovernments.12 The attempted starting-again, we could add, is moreoften ultraconservative or reactionary than revolutionary, and moremotivated by frustration than by hope.

"IIn Chile, Decree Law No. 1281, published in the Official Gazette of 11 Sept.1975 (one of many prohibitions written since 11 Sept. 1973), conferred on each"Military Chief of the Area" the power: "To suspend the printing, distribution andsale, for up to six editions of newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and printed matterin general, and the transmissions for up to six days of radio broadcasting stations,television channels and any other similar medium that broadcasts opinions, news orcommunications aimed at creating alarm or discontent in the population, that dis-tort the true extent of the facts, or are manifestly false or contravene the instructionsgiven them for reasons of internal order." (Quoted in Report on the Situation ofHuman Rights in Chile [Washington, D.C.: Organization of American States, 27 Sept.1985] 198-99.)

'2"Censorship and Other Problems of Latin American Writers," Working PaperNo. 14, Center of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, 1974, 18-19.

AL LENDE 549


9/13

But against this antihistorical resistance, of which the can-tankerous Esteban Trueba is a representative figure, another, moreimaginative, more perceptive resistance arrays itself. In The Houseof the Spirits Clara, Blanca, and Alba are its persistent mainstays overthree generations. Light is freedom and hope, and the luminous namesof the three women are clearly symbolic. The dramatic nucleus of thebook is the struggle between Trueba and the forces he generates, onthe one hand, and the female members of his family, on the other.He is the blind force of history, its collective unconscious, its somato-tonic (i.e., aggressive, vigorous, physical) manifestation. They embodyhistorical awareness and intuitive understanding. Trueba s a semicomicversion of the "world historical personalities" conceived of by Hegel;never happy, "they attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life waslabor and trouble; their whole nature was nothing but their masterpassion."" But unlike the three illustrious examples offered byHegel - Alexander the Great died young, Julius Caesar was murdered,Napoleon Bonaparte ended up in humbling exile- Esteban Trueba ivesthrough the problems and outrages he helps create. Possessed by aterrible temperament, violent and arbitrary n his treatment of peasantgirls, his sharecropping enants, his wife and daughter, and his political

enemies, and subject to furniture-smashing tantrums, he is notpermitted to recognize or forced to acknowledge - the consequencesof his acts until he's close to death. His author, it seems, decided toput off his death until he could be made to witness the full historicaleffect of his own retrogressive ideas and actions, and of hiscollaboration and conspiracy with like-minded people. Until that timeof punitive recognition he is subjected, as are two similarly Dionysianprotagonists Garcia Mirquez's Patriarch and Rulfo's Pedro Pairamo-to recurrent experiences of loneliness and frustration. His estrange-ment from his family (although he ends his isolation at Tres Mariasand joins them in "the big house on the corner") leads him, halfwaythrough the novel, to venture into politics as a Conservative Partycandidate for the Senate, "since no one better personified the honest,uncontaminated politician, as he himself declared" (191).

Symbolically in that same chapter (7), having won election asSenator, he becomes convinced that his body and brain are shrinkingand travels to the United States for diagnosis. Symbolically in that

chapter ("The Brothers") his two sons manifest themselves as ideologi-cally incompatible with him and with each other: Jaime is socially and

'3G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Hegel, trans. J. Sebree (New York: Dover,1956) 31.



10/13

socialistically committed; Nicolas, the childlike seducer, equates thehighest good with pleasure and later will found an Institute for Unionwith Nothingness and be arrested for singing Asiatic psalms nakedbefore the gates of Congress. And, symbolically, in that chapter Albais born (feet first, we're later told), harbinger of a new era.

Clara "la clarividente" died when Esteban was seventy, withtwenty-nine years still to go, and when Alba was seven. Did the sevenand its multiple of ten portend survival and good fortune for the oldman and his granddaughter? Clara, Blanca, and Alba, I've alreadyobserved, embody historical awareness and intuitive understanding.Their role throughout the novel is the preservation of moral and socialconscience and civic responsibility. Clara departs this life at a rela-

tively young age, but she'll often return as a spirit to the halls andbedrooms of "the big house on the corner," and in chapter 14 ("TheHour of Truth"), to Alba's tomblike prison cell. The latter apparitionoccurs at the crucial moment when Alba, having undergone the worstof the tortures directed by Esteban Garcia, has decided to stop eating,drinking, and even breathing, in hopes of a quicker death. Clarasucceeds in convincing her granddaughter that "the point was not todie, . . . but to survive" (351). Further, she strengthens Alba's will to

live by urging her to write-"in her mind, without paper or pencil"(351)-not only to forestall madness by keeping her mind occupied,but to preserve a testimony that sooner or later and one way or anothermust be revealed to the outside world. Her reason is that, given theways in which the inside world works (through torture, deceit, abuse,betrayal, and cowardly concealment), no one has a right to ignoranceor forgetfulness, and the true heart of literature is neither pleasurenor knowledge, but survival. The paragraph n which Allende describeshow Alba tries to reconstruct what has happened to her could easilybe adapted to an essay or textbook on the function of memory withinthe creative process:

Alba tried to obey her grandmother, ut as soon as she began to takenotes with her mind, the doghouse [i.e., her undersized, dark prison cell]filled with all the characters f her story, who rushed n, shoved each otherout of the way to wrap her in their anecdotes, heir vices, and their virtues,trampled on her intention o compose a documentary, nd threw her testi-mony to the floor, pressing, nsisting, and egging her on. She took downtheir words at breakneck ace, despairing ecausewhileshe was fillinga page,the one before it was erased. This activity kept her fully occupied. At first,she constantly ost her train of thought and forgot new facts as fast as sheremembered hem. The slightestdistraction r additional ear or pain causedher story to snarl ike a ball of yarn. But she invented a code for recalling

ALLENDE 551


11/13

things n order, and then she was able to bury herself so deeply n her storythat she stopped eating, scratching erself, smellingherself, and complain-ing, and overcame all her varied agonies. (352)

Of course, after Alba is set free - and it is through the interven-tion of Trinsito Soto, a prostitute friend of Esteban Trueba's frommany years back who owes him a favor, that her release is made pos-sible - she tells us in the first-person singular Epilogue that her grand-father was the one "who had the idea that we should write this story"(366). He also helped write it, with a memory that was intact "downto the last second of his ninety years." More basic still is the contribu-tion of Grandmother Clara, who had superior psychic powers but a

poor memory;but even before

becoming deliberatelymute at the

ageof ten she had begun to write copiously in her notebooks about every-thing that happened in her eccentric family. It is only after finishingthe book and then returning to the first page that we can identify withcertainty the "I" n the phrase, "never suspecting that fifty years laterI would use her notebooks to reclaim the past and overcome terrorsof my own" (3). Clara's notebooks - arranged not chronologically butaccording to the importance of events - are mentioned on the last pagein the same context as they were on the first. "Clara wrote them sothey would help me now to reclaim the past and overcome terrors ofmy own" (368).

Clara the Clairvoyant was, then, the creative spirit who at thesame time that she bore witness to history was able on occasion toalter it and even to perceive its predetermined elements (for the samereason she frequently foresaw what was going to happen). If obser-vation of what occurs, changing the course of what occurs, and under-standing what must occur are the three most important attributes of

the narrative writer, then Clara fully and dynamically symbolizes thenarrative writer. Although she kept forgetting things - menial everydaydetails - she forced her memory to work through writing (the Note-books). Although Esteban Trueba pampered her and regaled her withluxuries including a canopy bed with gauze curtains "that looked likea sailboat on a sea of silken blue water" (84), she had a keen socialconscience and on her first stay at Tres Marias immediately sensedthe workers' "resentment, ear and distrust" upon which Colonel Garciaas a

boywas nurtured.

Althoughwith distracted sweetness she "lived

in a universe of her own invention" (72), she simultaneously enduredthe abuses of society and her husband - who knocked out four of herfront teeth when he discovered that their daughter Blanca was PedroTercero Garcia's secret lover.



12/13

Clara became immune to surprise (her nursemaid tried for severalyears to frighten her into speaking during the nine-year silence).

Clara interpreted dreams.Clara predicted with demonstrated accuracy deaths, earthquakes,

and evil actions.Clara was able to move objects without touching them.Clara could invoke ghosts.Clara played Chopin on the piano without raising the lid over

the keyboard. And so forth.Only a writer endowed with a comparably wide range of secret

powers is likely to exercise effectively the art of survival in the twen-tieth century. By the art or literature of survival I mean the ultimate

power of testimony through the creative use of memory. That is, crea-tive memory enables testimony to transcend obstacles, ignorance, andrepression. It has often been suggested that The House of the Spiritscoincides too much with the genealogical, magical, and procreativemotifs of One Hundred Years of Solitude, as well as with the latterwork's uses of memory and oblivion. But a succinct commentary byRoger Shattuck on Garcia Mirquez's novel can help us see the differ-ence between it and Allende's work: "the metaphysical picaresque" hasbecome a

genreas well as an attitude:

They're all saying the same thing. It goes on and on. Having assimi-lated Borges and Robbe-Grillet nd God knows who else, Gabriel GarciaM~arquez reated he masterpiece n the genre. In One Hundred Years f Soli-tude everything egins n realityand ends n fantasy. You can watch t happen.The natural givesbirth to the supernatural, he surreal with no detectableshift in style or tone. Believeor disbelieve he events at your own risk. It'slike an unstoppable ollercoaster but we're not supposed o get dizzy! ...

Each one of these works of the metaphysical icaresque evises ts ownparticular nactment f Don Quixote- but with one major difference: anchoPanza has been eliminated gagged or kidnapped or killed outright. With-out his voice of sanity and reality, all modes of existence can claim equalstatus. And they do- without distinction. We seem to want that. OneHundred Years of Solitude pleases everyone ust by the way it keep over-flowing the pot and outdistancing eality. The more a work makes us loseour orientation, our sense of constraints, he more we praise t. The meta-physical picaresque.14

"The unstoppable roller coaster," the hurricane, geography thatfades into mirage, irretrievable dispersion. In The House of the Spirits

14Roger Shattuck, The Innocent Eye: On Modern Literature and the Arts (NewYork: Farrar, 1984) 334.

ALLENDE 553


13/13

magic and the flights of fancy are the instrumental privilege of a selectfew: the "extraordinary women" to whom Isabel Allende dedicates hernovel. Amidst the abuse and the madness that surround them, orien-tation is not lost. When Alba is finally released one night on a garbage-strewn vacant lot, she is granted provisional freedom, a possibilityof putting things together again if only in writing. She doesn't knowwhether the child in her womb was engendered by a rapist or by Miguel,for whom she'll wait. She considers what has happened to her as"another link to the chain of events that had to complete itself" (367).Yet she is determined "to break that terrible chain" that hatred hasso relentlessly fashioned. She finds her basic hope in GrandmotherClara's insightful Notebooks, and in the pages she herself is engaged

in writing.

University of Pennsylvania


novel essay source

Documents