The House of the Spirits
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- This article is about the novel. For the 1993 film, see The House of the Spirits (film).
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| Cover of the 1993 Bantam 1st english paperback | |
| Author | Isabel Allende |
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| Original title (if not in English) | La Casa de los Espiritus |
| Translator | Alastar Reid |
| Cover Artist | Neue Constantine Film |
| Country | Chile |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre(s) | Autobiographical novel, Magical realism |
| Publisher | Plaza & Jones, S.A. (Spain) Alfred A. Knopf (U.S.) Bantam (US) |
| Released | 1982 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 433 pp (1993 Bantam first English edition, paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-553-27391-4 (1993 Bantam first English edition, paperback) |
The House of the Spirits (Spanish: La Casa de los Espíritus) is the debut novel of Isabel Allende. Its publication in 1982 catapulted its author to literary stardom. A family saga spanning four generations, the novel traces the post-colonial social and political upheavals of Chile. The story is told mainly from the perspective of two protagonists and abounds in magical-realistic elements.
One of the principal criticisms levelled against The House of the Spirits is its too-close-for-comfort similarity to One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. Aside from the multi-generational aspects of both novels and the underlying theme of generational corruption, both rely heavily on magic realism and serendipity, both deliberately indulge in post-modernist flattening of characters, and both use distancing effects in order to achieve a dreamlike quality to the narrative. Also like García Márquez, who is an avowed and enthusiastic disciple, The House of the Spirits clearly shows the heavy influence of William Faulkner, especially in the novel's use of shifting narrative points of view, reminiscent of The Sound and the Fury.
[edit] Plot summary
The novel begins and ends with the same sentence: Barrabás came to us by sea... The novel purports to be a compilation of writings of Esteban Trueba and his wife Clara's diary entries as edited and annotated by their granddaughter Alba. Because the book is a compilation of diary entries and different authors, the point of view frequently changes without warning.
The story starts with the child Clara's diary entry on a Holy Thursday followed by her irreverent remark at a noon mass in the capital of an unnamed South American country. The scandalous incident at the church sets the tone for the rest of the novel.
Some readers say the Trueba family saga is a roman à clef. According to them, The Poet in the novel is probably Pablo Neruda and Allende's uncle Salvador Allende is both The Candidate and The President.
This is supported by the fact that when Isabel Allende received news in 1981 that her 90-year-old grandfather was dying, she began to write him a letter that later became the manuscript of The House of the Spirits. (www.isabelallende.com)
Some readers are disturbed by many of the book's graphic descriptions while others find the book's "magic realism" elements, such as ghosts, difficult. However, The House of the Spirits is generally listed among the classics of Latin American literature.
[edit] Characters in "The House of the Spirits"
[edit] Clara del Valle
Clara is the key female figure in the novel, which follows her from early in her childhood until her death (and after). She is a clairvoyant and telekinetic and rarely attentive to domestic tasks, but she holds her family together with her love for them and her predictions. She is the daughter of Severo and Nivea del Valle, wife of Esteban Trueba, and mother of Blanca, Jaime, and Nicolás.
As a child, she stopped speaking for many years following the death of her sister Rosa the Beautiful. Her first words after breaking her silence were to announce that she would marry Esteban Trueba, who had earlier sought Rosa's hand. Though it is noted that she did not marry for love, she remains faithful to Esteban though he frequently is unfaithful to her. After a violent fight in which Esteban strikes her and knocks out several of her teeth, she refuses to speak to him for the rest of her life, though she later accepts him back into her home and accompanies and forgives him as he is dying (in spirit form, since she died several years prior).
In her youth Clara idolizes her uncle Marcos, the brother of Nivea, who traveled around the world and whose death was accompanied by the arrival of Barrabás. She tells his mystical tales to her daughter Blanca and to Alba, and these tales help the characters retain hope through difficult times. Clara practices divining and moving inanimate objects, most notably a three-legged table, and she is surrounded by friends such as the psychic Mora sisters and The Poet.
[edit] Esteban Trueba
Esteban Trueba is the central male character of the novel and the only principal one to survive from the novel's beginning to its end. In his youth, he sought the unattainable Rosa the Beautiful, daughter of Severo and Nivea del Valle, and so he slaved in the mines to earn a suitable fortune with which to marry her. His life took a drastic turn when Rosa was accidentally poisoned to death, and he channeled his drive into restoring the hacienda that had belonged to his family, Tres Marías. Later he attempts to stifle his loneliness and pain as a result of his losing Rosa by raping numerous peasant women. The first woman he rapes, Pancha, becomes pregnant and bears him a son, Esteban García, who plays an important role later in the novel.
Eventually, Esteban desires a wife to bear him legitimate heirs, and he and Clara marry. As a result of having had to struggle and suffer all his life, Esteban has a violent temper which causes deep tensions in the Trueba family and his obsession for Clara leads him to drive away his only sibling, a sister named Férula, when he believes that she is becoming too close to Clara. Clara bears Esteban three children, and Esteban lacks a strong relationship with all of them as his violent demeanor drives them away. In particular, his relaionship with his daughter Blanca is strained to breaking point after she becomes romantically involved with her childhood friend Pedro Tercero Garcia, who is driven off the family farm by Esteban because he is a Communist. Esteban seems to show genuine feelings for only one relative, his granddaughter Alba. In his later years, Trueba becomes a powerful and wealthy senator in the Conservative Party. In his last days, however, he slowly loses the rage that has been driving him all his life, and dies in Alba's arms, knowing that he has achieved Clara's posthumous forgiveness.
[edit] Blanca Trueba
Blanca is Clara and Esteban's first born daughter. Despite of her family's status and beliefs, she falls in love at a young age with Pedro Tercero, a young peasant living and working on Esteban's hacienda. She becomes pregnant with his child, Alba, and to save face, her father orders her to marry a wealthy but mysterious foreigner, the Count de Satigny. Her marriage to the Count never officially ends, though she leaves him when she discovers evidence of his orgies and erotic practices. She moves back in with her parents and works humbly to support herself, as Esteban Trueba gives her nothing due to her disgraced life. Pedro Tercero is her lover throughout the novel, though they only finally live together after the coup d'état when Esteban, now a Senator, arranges for them to be smuggled out of the country to Canada, initiating a final reconciliation between father and daughter.
[edit] Pedro Tercero
Pedro is the son of the foreman of Tres Marías, Pedro Segundo. From a young age, he falls in love with Blanca and fathers her only child, Alba. In his youth, he spreads socialist ideals to the workers on the hacienda, and later he becomes a revolutionary and a songwriter (his character is modeled after revolutionary songwriter Victor Jara). He is violently confronted by Esteban Trueba after Trueba learns about Pedro's involvement with Blanca, and as a result, Pedro loses several fingers on his hand. Despite many years of mutual hatred, he and Trueba eventually come to an understanding, and Trueba helps him and Blanca escape the country when he becomes a wanted criminal following the coup d'état.
[edit] Alba
Alba is the daughter of Blanca and Pedro Tercero, although for many years of her life she was led to believe that Count de Satigny was her father. From before her birth, her grandmother Clara decreed that she was blessed by the stars. It is she who, in collaboration with an elderly Esteban Trueba, composes the book based on her grandmother Clara's journals. She falls and remains in love with Miguel, a revolutionary who joins the guerilla fighters, and because of her connection to him, she is almost tortured to death by the military leaders of the coup d'état. Like her great-aunt Rosa, Alba has green hair. The novel ends with Esteban's death, and Alba sits alone in the vast Trueba mansion beside his body. The last paragraph reveals that she is pregnant, although she does not know (or care) whether the father is Miguel, or Esteban Garcia (see below).
[edit] Supporting Characters
[edit] Severo and Nivea del Valle
Severo and Nivea are the parents of Rosa, Clara, and many other children. Severo's bid for a liberal party office was cut short by his daughter Rosa's death, though Nivea later campaigns for women's liberation in Chile. The couple dies in a gruesome car accident in which Nivea is decapitated. Clara correctly predicts the location of her mother's head, and the head is kept in the basement of Clara and Esteban's home until Clara's death so as not to arouse suspicion.
[edit] Nana
Nana is the servant and nanny of the del Valle and Trueba families for all her life, and she establishes close relationships with all the children she takes care of. She becomes very fond of Clara, and devoted herself to scaring her in her silent years in order to make her speak. When Severo and Nivea died in the car accident, she moved to Clara's house to take care of her children. She died of fright in her bed, at the beginning of the catastrophic earthquake that befell the country. Since her employers where absent for several days after the earthquake, the other servants buried her without ceremony, but she was later moved by Clara to the del Valle cemetery.
[edit] Rosa the Beautiful
Rosa is the child of Severo and Nivea del Valle, and from birth her green hair and translucent beauty made her stand out. Though she attracted many suitors, she agreed to take the hand of Esteban Trueba, and she waited patiently for him as he worked in the mines to amass a sizable fortune so they could marry. However, while she was recovering from an illness, she drank poisoned brandy intended for her father Severo, who was running for political office, and died. A graphic autopsy is performed on her body by a local doctor and his assistant, which is secretly observed by Clara and drives her into a period of silence. Esteban, who was deeply in love with her, is haunted by her death all of his life.
[edit] Barrabás
Clara's dog. Arriving as a bedraggled puppy, he grows to an enormous size, becoming the Del Valles' cheerful and pleasure-inspiring, if destructive, family pet. On the day of Clara's and Esteban's wedding, he is murdered by a butcher for an unkown reason, and dies in Clara's arms. After his death, Esteban Trueba makes a rug from his pelt. When Clara violently fainted upon seeing the rug Estaban packs it away in the basement. Later he shows it to Alba, Estaban and Clara'a granddaughter. Clara's record of Barrabás' arrival serves as the both the opening and closing line in the novel.
[edit] Jaime Trueba
Jaime Trueba is one of the sons of Clara del Valle and Esteban Trueba, twin of Nicolás. Jaime becomes a doctor and devotes most of his life to helping the poor. He develops a personal relationship with The Candidate and later is executed as a result of this relationship, refusing to betray him during the coup. As he grows, he becomes strong, somber, and almost empty emotionally, being especially close only to Alba, Amanda, and sometimes Pedro Tercero Garcia. During the greatest part of his life, he remained in his room surrounded by his books or at the hospital treating all sorts of patients. As a result of his Liberal ideas, he often argued with his father, and used the del Valle last name rather than Trueba. When the coup occurs, he is one of the men standing by the President, and is taken prisoner by the invading military forces. After refusing to go on national television and say that the President committed suicide, he is taken to a military prison, detained and eventually murdered.
[edit] Nicolás Trueba
Twin of Jaime. Unlike Jaime, Nicolás is outgoing, graceful, and spiritual. He devotes his youth to finding a business that would earn him lots of money, while keeping a loose relationship with Amanda. His desire to be as spiritual as his mother leads him to visit the east (specifically India), where he learns all sort of spiritual exercises such as meditation. When he returned home, he dedicated himself to spreading his knowledge through books (which fail) and through an academy he set up at home. When he confronts his father about the academy and causes Esteban to have a heart attack, he was sent to North America, where he sets up a more successful academy which earns him riches and became his only successful business (ironically, the academy teaches aligning oneself with nothingness).
[edit] Amanda
Amanda is the lover of both Trueba twins. As a young woman, she is a social idealist, developing a relationship with Nicolás, with whom she attempts to gain spiritual richness. When she becomes pregnant, Nicolás finds out the emptiness of their love, and asks Jaime to perform an abortion.Years later, when her brother Miguel seeks medical attention from Jaime for her drug addiction, she and Jaime become lovers. Sadly, by this time, Jaime is too old to feel any affection, and stays with her only to help her recover from her addiction. She becomes a nurse and helps Jaime until he is killed, and then she befriends Alba and resumes smoking. She is killed after the coup d'état after being kidnapped and refusing to reveal her brother Miguel's whereabouts, thus fulfilling a promise she made on Miguel's first day of school.
[edit] Miguel
Miguel is Alba's lover. When young, he would visit the Trueba home with his sister, Amanda, who frequently visited Nicolás. He witnessed the birth of Alba, and was later sent to school after the suggestion of Clara, who he thought was her mother. He attended university to study law, though his revolutionary ideals soon led him to participate in student protests and become a revolutionary himself. He was one of the few who always believed a revolution was necessary for the leftists to win. After the coup d'état, he becomes a guerrilla fighter and goes into hiding, and because of her connection to him, Alba and Amanda are imprisoned and tortured. It is revealed that he worked with Esteban Trueba to find Alba after she was taken away, and he suggested that Esteban should ask Tránsito Soto for help. He leaves before Alba arrives home, and at the end of the book Alba remains alone at the house, waiting for him to arrive.
[edit] Férula Trueba
Férula is the sister of Esteban Trueba. She lives her life as a deeply religious woman bound to her duty of caring for her ailing mother and serving the poor. However, she conceals bitter feelings about this fate. She is befriended by Clara and moves in with her brother upon his marriage, and she soon develops a motherly relationship toward Clara. This results in conflict between Esteban and her, both fighting for the affection of Clara. In a fit of rage, Esteban throws her out of his house when he feels she has become too close to Clara, and she curses him, vowing that he will die alone and bound to shrink to the size of his soul. Years later, Clara and her children see an apparition of Férula, and Clara correctly predicts that Férula has died alone in her house.
[edit] Pedro Garcia & Pedro Segundo Garcia
Native residents of Tres Marias, they are loyal tenants of Estaban Trueba from the beginning, although Pedro Segundo dislikes him. Pedro Garcia is known for his wisdom, and performs feats such as ending an ant plague that almost destroys Tres Marias and relocating every single bone of Trueba after a wall fell on him during the earthquake. He is also the one who tells Pedro Tercero the story of the chickens who chase the fox, inspiring his revolutionary spirit. Pedro Segundo, his son, becomes Trueba's most trusted tenant and his foreman, and almost, in a way, a friend. He develops strong admiration of Clara, and helps her on occasions. He leaves Tres Marias when Trueba expresses desires to kill Pedro Tercero, saying that he does not want to be there when Trueba finds Pedro Tercero, and only turns up in the novel once more, to attend Clara's funeral.
[edit] Pancha Garcia
The sister of Pedro Segundo who is raped by Esteban Trueba. She was the product of two generations of raped women. She teaches her grandson, Esteban Garcia, that if his father had been born in place of Blanca, Nicolás, or Jaime, he would have inherited some of the Trueba family fortune. This causes Esteban Garcia to despise the children and exact his revenge on Alba.
[edit] Esteban García
Esteban García is Esteban Trueba's unacknowledged grandson, the son of an illegitimate child conceived in an affair Trueba had with a servant woman, Pancha, at Tres Marías. Esteban García develops a strong hatred for the Trueba family. Eventually, he meets Esteban Trueba when he reveals the hideout of Pedro Tercero Garcia for a reward he never obtains, and so causes Pedro's loss of three fingers. He attempts to molest Trueba's granddaughter Alba when she is a child. He rises through the ranks of the police with the help of Trueba's recommendation, who was still unaware of his identity. After the coup, Colonel García manifests his hatred by raping and cruelly torturing Alba, cutting the same three fingers that her father had lost and sending them to Trueba by mail.
[edit] Tránsito Soto
Tránsito is a prostitute that first cultivates a relationship with Esteban Trueba when he hires her in his youth. He gives her fifty pesos to feed her ambition, and she later establishes a union to eventually become the owner of the Hotel Christopher Columbus. She manages to succeed throughout her life by supporting every government that takes hold of the country. Esteban continues visiting her through the years, and it is Tránsito that ultimately arranges for Esteban's granddaughter Alba to be freed from imprisonment, as her repayment for the 50 pesos that allowed her to succeed.
[edit] Jean de Satigny
A mysterious French count that becomes popular in the country for his metrosexual behavior and his interest in indigenous art. He works with Trueba to establish a fur trade with Chinchillas, but the business fails to work, and instead he shows interest for Blanca, who refuses to marry him regardless of her appreciation of his friendship. Satigny is the one, apart from Clara, who discovers Blanca's relationship with Pedro Tercero, and he tells Trueba, successfully launching a series of events that left Trueba completely alone and Pedro Tercero with three fingers less. When it is discovered that Blanca is pregnant, she is forced to marry Satigny. At first, Blanca has no problem, until Jean begins illegal archaelogical practices, and Blanca begins to see mummies moving around the house. When Blanca finally discovered Satigny's orgies with the servant, she leaves him shortly before giving birth, and no one ever hears of him again. Years later, Alba is asked to identify his corpse at the morgue, and he is buried by Blanca and Alba.
[edit] The Three Mora Sisters
The three Mora sisters encounter Clara through their talk to spirits, and afterwards they become friends of the family. They visited Clara frequently along with numerous other clairvoyants and fans of the unknown, including the Poet. They also educated Nicolás and Amanda on spiritual matters. The three disappear after Clara's death, except for Luisa Mora, who visits the Trueba home along with Clara's spirit to warn Estaban and Alba of the catastrophic events that were about to take place. She is then kicked out unceremoniously out of the house by Trueba.
[edit] The Candidate and the Poet
The Candidate is a socialist politician who for most of the novel travels around the country, delivering harangues to workers and peasents, among them the peasants of Tres Marías. He has no electoral success, due to the efforts of Esteban Trueba and the Conservatives. Later in the novel, he rides a wave of popular support and wins a surprise election to the presidency, after which he is reffered to as "The President". The President's government is beset with economic problems, and after a few years is unseated by a military coup (which is first called for by Senator Trueba), in which he dies defending the Presidential Palace. Due to the strong parallels, it can be said that the Candidate represents the author's uncle Salvador Allende.
The Poet is at first a struggling writer, who is aided and encouraged by Clara as one of many struggling artsits she takes under her wing. He is a frequent guest at the Trueba household, where he becomes friends with young Alba. As his literary fame grows, he no longer seeks Clara's patronage. The Poet dies shortly after the coup that unseats the President, and Alba and her grandfather are two of only a handful of mourners brave enough to attend his funeral, as he was a communist and strong supporter of the President's government. The Poet's funeral becomes sort of a ceremonial burial of freedom, as a mourner calls out his and the President's names, to which the rest respond "Present, now and forever." There are strong parallels throughout the novel which suggest that the Poet represents Chilean writer and politician Pablo Neruda.
[edit] Film
In 1993 in film the book was made into a film (The House of the Spirits) by Danish director Bille August. The movie starred Jeremy Irons as Esteban Trueba, Meryl Streep as Clara del Valle Trueba, Winona Ryder as Blanca Trueba, Glenn Close as Férula Trueba and Antonio Banderas as Pedro Tercero García.
