Esteban & Clara
The conflict in life is in every place and in all fields. The time there is conflict in our story between our heroes, there is also one about the story itself. Isabel Allende, the author of The House of the Spirits, wrote the novel after fleeing her own country. She has been accused of everything from literary piracy to political exploitation for The House of the Spirits. Regarded as one of the most prominent examples of Latin American magical realism, many critics describe The House of the Spirits as a sort of feminist twist on Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Some scholars accuse Allende of being unoriginal, or even ripping off the Colombian author; however others defend Allende for mastering a genre (Dougherty 19).
The House of the Spirits can be read as a traditional romance novel, following a single family over several generations. But here we are going to talk about two persons of the Trueba family, Clara and Esteban. We are told that not only did Clara foresee her marriage but also the identity of her husband-to-be: Rosa's fiancé, whom she doesn’t see since her sister's funeral and who is fifteen years her senior. The patriarch of the Trueba family, Esteban is a passionate, hard-working man who is determined to succeed. He is also quick to anger, frequently cruel, and intolerant of those less fortunate than himself. He allows no contradiction of his strict conservative beliefs, and thinks he is justified in ruling his plantation with an iron hand because he has improved the peasants' standard of living. Notably, Clara marries Trueba without love and without conceding to the male authority implied by the traditional notion of marriage. Although Clara and Esteban share intense sexual ...
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...ying back what she owes to him before.
The mother and the father, the man and the woman, the reality and the spiritualty, the ghosts and the souls, the love and the hatred, the peasants and the rich, the good and the bad and Clara and Esteban, all can be found in The House of the Spirits. This is in many ways the message of the novel: action must be taken, resolves must be made, pain and suffering must be endured and resisted, but ultimately the world moves forward and, even if in unexpected ways, problems are resolved.
Jane Elizabeth Dougherty, in an essay for Novels for Students , Gale, 1999.
Ronie-Richele Garcia-Johnson, "The Struggle for Space: Feminism and Freedom in The House of the Spirits," in Revista Hispanica Moderna, Vol. XLVII, No. 1, June, 1994, pp. 184-193.
The House of the Spirits: A Twentieth-Century Family Chronicle By Charles Rossman
In Allende’s The House of the Spirits, Esteban Trueba is the principal male character. During the course of the novel, Trueba increases his power in the world as he progresses in status from a conservative landowner to a powerful senator. He is tyrannical, treating his family members and the tenants on his family hacienda, Tres Marías, like subjects rather than intimate community. The basis for most of Trueba's actions is the desire for power, control, and wealth, and he pursues these things at any cost, disregarding his emotional decline and the effects of his actions upon the people in his life.
Symbolism is the key to understanding Sandra Cisneros’ novel, “The House on Mango Street”. By unraveling the symbolism, the reader truly exposes the role of not only Latina women but women of any background. Esperanza, a girl from a Mexican background living in Chicago, writes down what she witnesses while growing up. As a result of her sheltered upbringing, Esperanza hardly comprehends the actions that take place around her, but what she did understand she wrote in her journal. Cisneros used this technique of the point of view of a child, to her advantage by giving the readers enough information of what is taking place on Mango Street so that they can gather the pieces of the puzzle a get the big picture.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, born as Juana Ramirez de Azbaje, is a well-known extraordinary figure from the colonial period. Sor Juana had a desire for education at such a young age. In the seventeenth century, it was the intellectual midpoint of Spanish colonial America. During this time Mexico City was politically and religiously the center of New Spain; the terrains went from California to Central America. In Latin American history the church and state defined women’s roles, which eventually change over time. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz articulated her experiences though writing, she broke silence about racial and gender inequality, and her legacy remains today.
Sandra Cisneros once said “'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. ’Latino' is the word we have always used for ourselves.” In the novel I read, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros the main character a twelve-year-old Chicana (Mexican-American girl), Esperanza, saw self-definition as a struggle, this was a major theme in the novel through Esperanza’s actions and the ones around her. Esperanza tries to find identity in herself as a women as well as an artist throughout the novel through her encounters. Esperanza was able to provide the audience an image that was vivid of her surroundings by her diction and tone. Esperanza presents a series of stories that she deals with in her neighborhood as she is growing up. Esperanza arose from poverty and always dreamt of having a house of her own. Sandra Cisneros' strong cultural and gender values have a tremendous influence in The House on Mango Street. Cisneros feels that the Mexican-American community is very abusive towards the treatment of women because men are seen as the powerful, strong figure. Women are seen as failure and can’t strive without men in a Mexican-American community. In this novel you can see a cultural approach which examines a particular aspect of a culture and a gender studies approach which examines how literature either perpetuates or challenges gender stereotypes.
Figueredo, Maria L. "The Legend of La Llorona: Excavating and (Re) Interpreting the Archetype of the Creative/Fertile Feminine Force", Latin American Narratives and Cultural Identity, 2004 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York. pp232-243.
Ruiz, Vicki L. From out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-century America. New York:
Cofer, Judith Ortiz. "The Myth of the Latina Woman." Bullock, Richard, Maureen Daly Goggin and Francine Weinburg. The Norton Field Guide to Writing. Ed. Marilyn Moller. 3rd. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013. 806-812. Print.
Martinez, Demetria. 2002. “Solidarity”. Border Women: Writing from la Frontera.. Castillo, Debra A & María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 168- 188.
Symbolism “acts as webbing between theme and story. Themes alone can sound preachy, and stories alone can sound shallow. Symbolism weaves the two together” (Hall). Symbolism uses the story to convey the theme. Darkness is used in the novel to show the secrecy and lies that the story has. The whole story involves secrecy among two women and a man. Without symbolism the story would just have a very dark house and two very mysterious and disturbed women. Instead there is a feel of secrecy right from the beginning. Symbolism gives the story excitement, while also providing the reader with a good read. The author can read the first few pages and determine the story is not a happy
...wler-Salamini and Mary Kay Vaughan, eds Creating Spaces, Shaping Transitions: Women of the Mexican Countryside, 1850-1990 Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994.
The theme of this book is that the human capacity to adapt to and find happiness in the most difficult circumstances. Each character in the novel shows this in their way. For instance, their family is randomly taken from their home and forced to work but they still remain a close nit family. In addition, they even manage to stick together after being separated for one of their own. These show how even in the darkest time they still manage to find a glimmer of hope and they pursued on.
In Federico García Lorca’s La Casa de Bernarda Alba, a tyrant woman rules over her five daughters and household with absolute authority. She prevents her daughters from having suitors and gives them little to no freedom, especially with regard to their sexualities and desires. They must conform to the traditional social expectations for women through sewing, cleaning, as well as staying pure and chaste. While, as John Corbin states in The Modern Language Review, “It was entirely proper for a respectable woman in [Bernarda’s] position to manage her household strictly and insist that the servants keep it clean, to defend its reputation, ensure the sexual purity of her daughters, and promote advantageous marriages for them,” Bernarda inordinately
Suaréz, Lucia M. “Julia Alvarez And The Anxiety Of Latina Representation.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 5.1 (2004): 117-145. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 25 Mar.2014.
The one of the main themes in the epilogue, and in the entire novel is
Isabel Allende’s novel, Eva Luna, amalgamates many of the techniques and conventions associated with the picaresque tradition, magical realism and bildungsroman in order to present a critique of dominant Eurocentric ideologies of the patriarchy and oligarchy in 20th century Latin America and to valorize the voices and experiences of the marginalized and oppressed. A prominent aspect of Eva Luna which acts as a vehicle for the novels critique of the patriarchal oligarchy are the numerous motifs and symbols utilized throughout the novel. The manner in which Allende introduces and develops symbols and motifs throughout the novel functions to set up a number of oppositions which portray a sense of loss of freedom and expression under the oppression of the colonizing oligarchy, illustrate the superficiality of oligarchic power and align the reader with expression over silence and transgression above oppression.