The Shrouded Woman is my favourite book I have read in this course so far. I usually find myself as a reader drawn to stories about romance and heartbreak. I was waiting for a book like this to be read during this course, and I was not disappointed. María Luisa Bombal gave an interesting first-person narrator of a dead woman, Ana María. I found the book easier to follow than the last two texts despite the narrator being dead, the story was smooth as people came to see her and to see the significance each individual had on her.
I was drawn to Ana and Ricardo's relationship. In the beginning, it seemed like the stereotypical first love. She was drawn to him even though she was intimidated by him. He was a type of "fascination" to her (160). Her love for Ricardo was a drug. No matter how many different men like Fernando and Antonio came into her life, nothing felt the same as Ricardo. She was chasing for a love that only Ricardo could fulfill.
Ana is shown as helpless to the act of love. Her first love Ricardo did not want anything to do with her after his trip from Europe. She also watched everyone in her family lose their chance for love. She could not have Ricardo, her brother was in love with Elena but married to someone else, and her father lost her mother and was now alone. Loneliness is a strong emotion felt throughout the text, which no one in the family could deal with. Ana carries on continuing to be alone and ends up as a sideline character in her own life.
I found it very upsetting and powerful in the story when Anna says, "why must a women's nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life? Men succeed in directing their passions to other things. But the fate of so many women seems to be to turn over and over in their heart some love sorrow while sitting in a neatly ordered house, facing an unfinished tapestry"(226). I have seen many women including myself grow up with a perfect fairy-tale idea of love. It made me sympathize with Ana that she has spent her entire life finding validity in men. Given the time, I don't blame her. Women were seen as incomplete without a man. Even when Ana was not happy with her relationship status with Antonio and went to see a lawyer, she was shut down because "Antonio is the father of [their] children; that there is steps a lady cannot take without lowering herself" (228). She was trapped and had no way out without reflecting it poorly on her societal status. It makes me feel more fortunate to be a part of a time where women don't give into gender stereotypes and are not seen as incomplete without a man.
My question for the class is: Do you agree with the lengths and sacrifices Ana went through for love?
"She was chasing for a love that only Ricardo could fulfill."
ReplyDeleteI think this is true--but isn't is also true for Ricardo? In other words, don't the men also suffer in Bombal's novel? What are the similarities and differences, I wonder, in men's and women's experience in the text?
Diya, I was also struck by the memory of the lawyer's office. I think beyond being "incomplete without a man," as you say, it is a matter of inferiority. In the lawyer's office, the talk of children comes up and meanwhile the narrator herself is being treated like a child.
ReplyDeleteYou raise some more interesting points here that can be categorized into useful tags (gender, love, patriarchy etc.). I encourage you to add these in to your posts from hereon out.
Hi Diya,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment on how smooth the story was which surprised me because it didn't follow a typical linear narrative. Ana María's story reflected on the standards women were trapped within. It also makes me think about how grateful I am that this is no longer a standard that I will have to face.