Theme of Violence in The House of the Spirits - Essay Example

Theme of Violence in ‘The House of the Spirits’ ‘The House of the Spirits’ by Isabel Allende instantly claimed the lime light once it was published in 1982. Set in a background of political turmoil of the late 20th century in Latin America, the novel explores and evaluates the theme of violence and its consequent effects on the lives of its various characters through more than three generations. Theme of violence Both political and domestic violence constitute part of the plot in ‘The House of the Spirits’. A candidate of the Conservative Party for the presidential election, and a patriarch, Esteban Trueba’s act of violence and torture on the peasant women of his hacienda, and sometimes on his wife, Clara reflects the greater violence afflicted on the people by the military regime after the election. There is a kind of ‘poetic justice’ that Allende seems to have maintained in the depiction of violence in her novel. Colonel Esteban Garcia’s raping and torturing of Alba somehow completes the circle of injustice that Alba’s grandfather had done on Garcia’s grandmother and father. In the first half of the story, Clara’s sister Rosa accidentally dies of poison that was meant for her father. In both the cases, Rosa and Alba suffer for no crime of theirs. They were innocent, just like the hundreds of men, women and children of Chile who were victims of violence and bloodshed in the 70s for no sin of theirs. Though Allende nowhere directly mentions the ‘capital city’ in the novel to be Chile, it is quite understandable from the depiction of facts and events. Her attitude to violence and its long term consequences is explicit in the writings of Alba, "The day my grandfather tumbled Pancha Garci­a among the rushes of the riverbank, he added another link to the chain of events that had to complete itself. Afterward the grandson of the woman who was raped repeats the gesture with the granddaughter of the rapist, and perhaps forty years from now my grandson will knock Garci­as granddaughter down among the rushes, and so on down through the centuries in an unending tale of sorrow, blood, and love." (Allende, 432). Allende’s fear of never-ending violence grapping mankind in the coming years surfaces when she addresses crime as a ‘chain of events’ that will keep on growing bigger and bigger through revenge and retribution. More revenge will lead to more violence which will ultimately bring doom to the entire mankind. So Allende looks to the future with hopes for a violence-free peaceful world when Alba feels like forgiving her torturer at the end. Domestic Violence Other than the political issue, violence on women also forms a major part of the theme of violence in ‘The House of the Spirits’. The condition of women in the 19th century American society has formed the core of writing of many noted contemporary women writers like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin. Like them Allende has also tried and succeeded in portraying the suppressed condition of women in a male-dominated patriarchal society. Esteban has tried again and again to impose his male power on women; be it knocking out his wife’s teeth by slapping, beating up his daughter Blanca for making love with the son of his foreman, or raping several peasant women including Pancha Garcia. In order to avenge himself upon Esteban for raping his grandmother, Colonel Esteban Garcia also selects the easier and more vulnerable medium of woman. He rapes Esteban’s grand daughter Alba more than once and tortures her inhumanly. Nicolas, Estaban’s legal son, forsakes his love Amanda as she becomes pregnant with his child and forces her to abort the child. On the other hand, his father forces Blanca’s marriage with a French count when he discovers his daughter’s pregnancy due to her relation with the love of her life, Pedro Tercero. Women had no say in any matters, be it related to her life or that of others. She could only protest by keeping quite like Clara, when she stops talking with her husband once he slaps her and retreating herself from him for the rest of her life. Yet, like Gilman suggesting ultimate triumph of women through the ‘narrator’ in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ establishing a world of her own by losing worldly senses, Allende also hints the same through Alba, who succeeds in overcoming the torture of police and giving herself a new life lighted by the blessings of motherhood. Use of Magic Realism to depict violence Isabel Allende uses the tool of magic realism and foreshadowing to create an atmosphere of tragic doom and ambiguity. A mixture of natural and supernatural, magic realism is a style of writing in which magic or supernatural elements are treated at per with reality. Many times dictatorship had imposed severe censorship on writers in different ages which prevented them from writing their mind freely and frankly. So they had to adopt tools like magic realism, surrealism, and anti realism to say in a suggestive way what they could not do directly. Allende, along with several other women writers of her age had to use magic realism to avoid her presentation of the series of events from being synonymous with harsh reality. Though Allende quite realistically depicts violence and the contemporary socio-political scenario in the novel, still she had to resort to magical realism, especially in the 1st half, in order to protect her writing from forceful censorship. Allende’s literary craftsmanship surfaces when she voices her protest against violence through the use of magic realism in writing that Blanca’s rubber plant “lowered its leaves and began to exude a whitish fluid, like tears of milk, from its stem” (Allende, 268) whenever Esteban entered his big house. Allende has also used foreshadowing in many contexts to establish the feel of overhanging fate of violence and tragedy. The comment of the narrator at the untimely and unfortunate death of Rosa, "the first of many acts of violence that marked the fate of the del Valle family." (Allende, 32) prepares the reader for the series of tragic incidents that would be following. The narrator’s comment "she did not know then that one day she would have to," (Allende, 224) when Amanda, overjoyed at meeting her brother after a long time, says that she could sacrifice herself for his sake asserts the same feeling of oncoming violence in the mind of the readers. Conclusion Isabel Allende in ‘The House of the Spirits’ unfolds violence which is shocking. She makes use of her artistic freedom to portray the images of violence which are not the figments of her imagination but historical facts. The tendency of American readers and the contemporary government to read and censor books which are visually and content-wise beautiful and appealing, is once again shattered by the gruesome description of rapes and murders which looks point blank in the eyes of the readers and bring them down from their seat of comfort to the hard-core and realities of their time. Reference Allende, Isabel. The House of the Spirits. Knopf.1985. Read More