The Maternal Threads: Allende

The House of the Spirits, loosely based on Allende’s own life story, i

The term magical realism, itself, originates from the pen of German critic, Franz Roh, in 1925, and was used to describe a group of Post Expressionist artists, but later delved into describing a Latin American literary genre popularized from after World War II, to the beginnings of the 1980s, around the time when Allende’s House of Spirits was first published. Leal Luis explains that

“At birth Rosa was white and smooth, without a wrinkle, like a porcelain doll, with green hair and yellow eyes-- the most beautiful creature to be born on earth since the days of original sin . . . There was something of a fish to her (if she had a scaly tail, she would have been a mermaid), but her two legs placed her squarely on the tenuous line between a human being and a creature of myth” (4-5).

“Clara’s death completely transformed life in the big house on the corner. Gone with her were the spirits and the guests, as well as he luminous gaiety that has always been present . . . Alba noticed the decline from the very first days. She saw it advancing slowly but inextolerably. She noticed it before anyone else in the flowers wilting in their vases . . . Then the plants died, because no one remembered to water them or talk to them as Clara had done” (Allende 195).

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Autumn of the Patriarch. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper Perennial, 1975.

Like Garcia Marquez’s fantastical General and his wife, Esteban can never fully possess magically aloof Clara, who finds herself more interested in the plight of the peasants and in writing in her notebooks, chronicling her clairvoyant predictions and hindsight, than in her husband. Esteban, whose narrative pieces are usually told in the first person, mimicking and highlighting the autocracy of patriarchy, recounts that “One day, Clara had a bolt installed on her bedroom door and after that she never let me in her bed again, except when I would forced myself on her and when to have said no would have meant the end of our marriage” (Allende 179). He further obsesses by recalling that “To hurt her feelings, I pretended I was going to the Red Lantern, but all she said was that it was a whole lot better that raping peasant girls, which surprised me, because I didn’t think she knew about that. As a result of her comments, I tried rape again, just to see if it would get a rise out of her . . .” (Allende 181). Even more alarming to his decaying patriarchy, is that not only can Esteban not posses his wife, he cannot control his daughter Blanca, who has a torrid affair with his foreman’s son (a man who opposes Esteban's political views). This union produces Alba, the unruly granddaughter he seeks to control as well, by lavishing gifts and enforcing a “British education.”

Rosa’s unusual beauty is an element of the magical, and she is a direct symbol of the feminine

Some topics in this essay:
Garcia Marquez’s, House Spirits, Leal Luis, Truebas Allende, Nicolas Esteban's, Maternal Threads, Red Lantern, Autumn Patriarch, Isabel Allende, Latin American, house spirits, “green world”, magical realism, autumn patriarch, gabriel garcia, isabel allende, latin american, garcia marquez, garcia marquez’s, gabriel garcia marquez, american literary, raping peasant girls, latin american literary, gabriel garcia marquez’s, section house spirits,