by Luci Navas Sharry
I have to admit that I was entering The House of the Spirits with high expectations. Its author Isabel Allende is one of the most respected authors
in Latin American literature. Her stories, which I read in school, have female protagonists who used their beauty and intelligence to advance themselves. And I wanted more. The House of the Spirits is Allende’s most famous work, published in the late 1980s, so I figured that would be the place to start.
The novel follows four generations of a prominent Chilean family, the Truebas, through the 20th century. It details how the family and its members change as the political and social landscape change with them. This inter-generational kind of storytelling is very common in Latino literature, and has lots of themes regarding tradition and revolution, that kind of thing. Naturally, one of the major themes is about women gaining their independence as time progresses.
The House of the Spirits details sexual assault in a way that’s really graphic and mentioned in a way that was just so…nonchalant. The abuse of multiple women without any sort of criticism on the part of the narrator is something I wasn’t expecting from a prominent feminist author. Part of me doesn’t know whether to take this as a face value. Because, obviously, the story is told through the point of view of a character whose opinion changes as the story progresses, right? And the character who commits sexual assault, the patriarch Esteban, has it come back to haunt him. It still bothers me, though, because for whatever reason, Allende never comes right out and criticizes sexual assault.
Allende toys with the idea that a woman must achieve her equality by using her femininity. Women should be quiet without being passive, caring without being weak, that kind of thing. Like, instead of speaking out against her violent husband, the character Clara instead takes a vow of silence. While I admit that it’s not what I love hearing, I respect that it’s her style. She also does this without being preachy, which I get is important for a book to circulate to wider audiences.
The book does show how feminist ways change throughout the century as Chile became more progressive. It reminds me of my own family, where generations of women all did something to upend the patriarchy. My great grandmother became the first woman to ever file for divorce in Venezuela, and she managed to get her kids away from her no good husband. My grandmother dropped out of high school to work as a secretary in order to support her family. My mom came to the United States from Venezuela to put herself through college, and now she has a masters degree and owns her own house. I don’t doubt that each of these women has their own view on feminism and the role of women in the house that’s vastly different from mine. The characters in the story are the same way; they had their own response to feminism that was increasingly more pronounced as time went on.
I wouldn’t call House of the Spirits groundbreaking literature for the 80’s, but I do think that Allende painted a stunning homage to her family and to the different generations of feminism. The first and second waves weren’t perfect, but they allowed us to stand on their shoulders and improve conditions for the next generation