Great Female Writers - Magical Realism and The Subversion of the Male Narrative Voice in Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits
The term 'magical realism' is often used interchangeably with the literature of Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende - two of Latin America's most popular authors. The term was popularised following the publication of Márquez's landmark novel One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1967, during the Latin American 'Boom' and gained further traction with the emergence of Isabel Allende onto the literary scene in 1982 with her debut novel The House of the Spirits.
The literary genre has often been described by critics as a political critique of the established elite in Latin America. The term itself captures and gives voice to that 'alternate', but incredibly present 'reality' within Latin America that had often been overlooked in national and political narratives, which were principally influenced by international movements and affairs. Indeed, the different worlds captured in Márquez's and Allende's novels both focus on the geographically, socially and economically marginalised, as well as the cyclical nature and trapped fate that their characters have endured from living this way for 'one hundred years'.
However - and somewhat ironically given the genre's focus on challenging the limited presentation of 'reality' in established narratives at the time - a crucial difference between the two novels is the lack of female representation in Márquez's text. Women in One Hundred Years of Solitude are limited to the domestic sphere and are generally represented as innocent, naive and ignorant of the outside world. As with many other examples of literature to come out of the Latin American 'Boom', Márquez's magical realism certainly questions the narratives that his novel is a reaction to, yet the text does so from a typically male-perspective and narrow way. As Allende herself says in her essay 'Writing as an Act of Hope' published in 1993: “all political systems, even revolutions, have been created and directed by men, always within the patriarchal regime. Important philosophical movements have tried to change man and society, but without touching the basis of human relations—that is, inequality of the sexes.”
It is only in Allende's novel that we find a more accurate version of this 'magical reality' - a novel which tells the story of three generations of women's suffering at the hands of men and which is narrated by the female protagonist, Alba, the youngest of the three. The 'reality' that Allende's novel presents the reader with is one which attempts to encompass the lives of all those marginalised - not just half of those within the 'patriarchal regime' - and aims to 'change man and society' whilst also addressing the 'inequality of the sexes' that her novel clearly attempts to redress.
The main way in which the novel aims to capture a more representative version of the Latin American 'reality' is through the combined narrative voices that Allende employs throughout the text. The novel is principally narrated by Alba, Clara and Esteban's grand-daughter, who uses both of her grand-parents’ version of accounts as well as additional sources to piece together the history of her family. Through Alba's over-arching narration of the events, the reader is presented with a first-person account of Esteban's story, such that the reader is lured into a false sense of security in trusting his narration. Critically, the reader is also made aware of the fallibility of such accounts when Esteban admits that 'more than half a century has passed' since the events occurred, or that his account is not based on his memory of the events but rather on others' ('they say I shouted') - which serves to undermine the reader's misplaced faith in the veracity of his authoritative narrative.
Unlike the events narrated directly by Esteban, Alba's third-person narration does not imply ownership of the events and employs a collection of (female) sources, including her own grandmother, Clara's, diaries and her mother, Blanca's, recollections, to recount events or moments that would not have been deemed 'important' by Esteban to include in the story. Examples of these are the untold tales of violence, personal histories lived by the women in the family and village and Alba's own experience of being imprisoned and tortured by the new government. By employing these two contrasting narrative-voices and juxtaposing them throughout the novel, Allende's text not only adds to the previously incomplete picture that was presented by such 'male narratives' that Esteban's account symbolises, but also asks the reader to constantly assess and challenge the truth of such patriarchal accounts, whilst simultaneously pointing out the flaws and missing pieces within it.
In fact, it has been argued that the act of writing in The House of the Spirits is in itself a form of female resistance. Symbolically, Alba decides to start writing following her imprisonment in the women's camp, where she is beaten, raped and tortured. It is the other women in the camp that encourage her and support her when her writing brings back 'bad memories', or whenever she sees 'Colonel García coming to plunge (her) back into his world of terror'. She is 'wrapped in the closeness of so many women', and it is only in this loving and supportive context that she is able to begin to overcome the ordeal that she has suffered and lived.
This image of imprisonment and female solidarity thus transcends the realms of fiction to represent, more metaphorically, the important role that female authors have to play in society and the lack of female representation in Spanish American narratives. We are told that Alba, the granddaughter of an abusive and patriarchal man, 'break(s) that terrible chain' that has trapped women to their predetermined fate through the retelling of this story. Similarly, we can also say that Allende's novel 'breaks' with 'that terrible chain' of lack of female representation in Latin American literature and meta-narratives more generally. Indeed, as Clara tells Alba when she is struggling to write, she must write 'in her mind, without paper or pencil' - her words must go deeper than the page and into the previously established 'truths' and 'realities' that exist in the minds of the continent and beyond.
In her essay 'Writing as an act of hope', Allende states that, 'now, finally, women are breaking the rule of silence and raising a strong voice to question the world'. Though Allende never explicitly groups herself with these female authors that she refers to throughout her essay, there can be no doubt that Alba's character in The House of the Spirits, and her subversion and challenge of the narrative events as recounted by her grandfather, 'after centuries of silence' (perhaps even 'one hundred years'), has helped women question, subvert and reclaim the previously incomplete picture of reality that Esteban's account symbolises and take 'by assault' that almost 'exclusively male club' of literature and truth that Allende describes.
By Lila (Spanish and Modern Greek, University of Oxford)