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The House of the Spirits
“There are few trips more thrilling than those taken in the imagination of a brilliant novelist. That experience is available in The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. . . . Although remote from our country and our time, the characters, their joys and their anguish, could not be more contemporary or immediate.”
—Carol E. Rinzler, Cosmopolitan
“Spectacular . . . An absorbing and distinguished work . . . A novel of peace and reconciliation . . . The House of the Spirits, with its all-informing, generous, and humane sensibility, is a unique achievement, both personal witness and possible allegory of the past, present, and future of Latin America. It is also a moving and compelling first novel, translated with grace and accuracy by Magda Bogin.”
—Alexander Coleman, The New York Times Book Review
“A runaway bestseller in Europe, this accomplished first novel is a richly symbolic family saga by the niece of Chile’s assassinated President Salvador Allende. It is both an engrossing narrative and an impassioned testimony to the people of Chile. . . . Because of its supple integration of the supernatural with the real, the book will be compared with Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Allende has her own distinctive voice, however; . . . it has a whimsical charm, besides being clearer, more accessible, and more explicit about the contemporary situation in South America. . . . Richly and meticulously detailed.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A strong, absorbing Chilean family chronicle, plushly upholstered—with mystical undercurrents . . . There’s a comfortable, appealing professionalism to Allende’s narration, slowly turning the years through the Truebas’ passions and secrets and fidelities. . . . The characters are clear and sharp . . . A fine array of exotic, historical settings . . . Uncommonly satisfying.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Allende’s writing is so inventive, funny, and persuasive that in the process of creating a stimulating political novel she has also created a vivid, absorbing work of art. Her characters are fascinatingly detailed and human.”
—Ralph Novak, People
“An alluring, sometimes magical tale . . . In its tumultuous story of rebellion and love among three generations, it is an allegory in which any family should be able to recognize a bit of itself.”
—Claudia Rosett, The Wall Street Journal
“Nothing short of astonishing . . . In The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende has indeed shown us the relationships between past and present, family and nation, city and country, spiritual and political values. She has done so with enormous imagination, sensitivity, and compassion.”
—Jane Futcher, San Francisco Chronicle
“Magnificent . . . Imaginative and compelling . . . A truly enchanting world where hope is never lost.”
—Charles Larson, Detroit News
“Haunting . . . Rich and complex . . . Gripping.”
—Miriam Berkley, Chicago Sun-Times
“Compelling . . . A splendid and fantastic meditation on a people and a nation.”
—Booklist
“Her novel is possessed by an immense energy, a fecund imagination, and . . . an elegant way with the language.”
—Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek
“She can create diverse characters of depth, nudge the plot with ease, and shift ably from the domestic sphere to the political. She is, above all, another remarkable storyteller from a continent blessed with many such enchanters. . . . Allende has an affection for her characters quite beyond politics, and an estimable ability to bring them to life.”
—Dan Cryer, Newsday
“Moving and powerful . . . Her novel captivates and holds the reader throughout. . . . The House of the Spirits is full of marvelous and unforgettable women who add a special dimension to the book. . . . Magda Bogin’s excellent translation captures the luminous prose of Isabel Allende and makes the reading of this novel an unforgettable experience.”
—Marjorie Agosin, The Christian Science Monitor
“The only cause The House of the Spirits embraces is that of humanity, and it does so with such passion, humor, and wisdom that in the end it transcends politics. . . . The result is a novel of force and charm, spaciousness and vigor.”
—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
“Allende is a talented writer who deftly uses the techniques of magical realism but also shows great sensitivity in the delineation of character.”
—Library Journal
“Isabel Allende’s extraordinary first novel, The House of the Spirits, mixes fiction, journalism, and a sense of magic in an epic that qualifies her as one of Latin America’s most inspired writers. . . . The richness and texture alone of Allende’s book put it with the best of the sweeping family chronicles.”
—Maggie Locke, San Diego Tribune
To my mother, my grandmother, and all the other extraordinary women of this story
How much does a man live, after all?
Does he live a thousand days, or one only?
For a week, or for several centuries?
How long does a man spend dying?
What does it mean to say “for ever”?
Pablo Neruda
— ONE —
ROSA THE BEAUTIFUL
Barrabás came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. She was already in the habit of writing down important matters, and afterward, when she was mute, she also recorded trivialities, never suspecting that fifty years later I would use her notebooks to reclaim the past and overcome terrors of my own. Barrabás arrived on a Holy Thursday. He was in a despicable cage, caked with his own excrement and urine, and had the lost look of a hapless, utterly defenseless prisoner; but the regal carriage of his head and the size of his frame bespoke the legendary giant he would become. It was a bland, autumnal day that gave no hint of the events that the child would record, which took place during the noon mass in the parish of San Sebastián, with her whole family in attendance. As a sign of mourning, the statues of the saints were shrouded in purple robes that the pious ladies of the congregation unpacked and dusted off once a year from a cupboard in the sacristy. Beneath these funereal sheets the celestial retinue resembled nothing so much as a roomful of furniture awaiting movers, an impression that the candles, the incense, and the soft moans of the organ were powerless to counteract. Terrifying dark bundles loomed where the life-size saints had stood, each with its influenza-pale expression, its elaborate wig woven from the hair of someone long dead, its rubies, pearls, and emeralds of painted glass, and the rich gown of a Florentine aristocrat. The only one whose appearance was enhanced by mourning was the church’s patron saint, Sebastián, for during Holy Week the faithful were spared the sight of that body twisted in the most indecent posture, pierced by arrows, and dripping with blood and tears like a suffering homosexual, whose wounds, kept miraculously fresh by Father Restrepo’s brush, made Clara tremble with disgust.
It was a long week of penitence and fasting, during which there were no card games and no music that might lead to lust or abandon; and within the limits of possibility, the strictest sadness and chastity were observed, even though it was precisely at this time that the
forked tail of the devil pricked most insistently at Catholic flesh. The fast consisted of soft puff pastries, delicious vegetarian dishes, spongy tortillas, and enormous cheeses from the countryside, with which each family commemorated the Passion of the Lord, taking every precaution not to touch the least morsel of meat or fish on pain of excommunication, as Father Restrepo had repeatedly made clear. No one had ever dared to disobey him. The priest was blessed with a long, incriminating finger, which he used to point out sinners in public, and a tongue well schooled in arousing emotions.
“There’s the thief who steals from the collection box!” he shouted from the pulpit as he pointed to a gentleman who was busying himself with the lint on his lapel so as not to show his face. “And there’s the shameless hussy who prostitutes herself down by the docks!” he accused Doña Ester Trueba, disabled by arthritis and a devotee of the Virgin del Carmen, who opened her eyes wide, not knowing the meaning of the word or where the docks were. “Repent, sinners, foul carrion, unworthy of our Lord’s great sacrifice! Fast! Do penance!”
Carried away by vocational zeal, the priest did all he could do to avoid openly disobeying the instructions of his ecclesiastic superiors, who, shaken by the winds of modernism, were opposed to hair shirts and flagellation. He himself was a firm believer in the value of a good thrashing to vanquish the weaknesses of the soul and was famous for his unrestrained oratory. The faithful followed him from parish to parish, sweating as he described the torments of the damned in hell, the bodies ripped apart by various ingenious torture apparatuses, the eternal flames, the hooks that pierced the male member, the disgusting reptiles that crept up female orifices, and the myriad other sufferings that he wove into his sermons to strike the fear of God into the hearts of his parishioners. Even Satan was described in his most intimate perversions in the Galician accents of this priest whose mission in this world was to rouse the conscience of his indolent Creole flock.
Severo del Valle was an atheist and a Mason, but he had political ambitions and could not allow himself the luxury of missing the most heavily attended mass on Sundays and feast days, when everyone would have a chance to see him. His wife, Nívea, preferred to deal with God without benefit of intermediaries. She had a deep distrust of cassocks and was bored by descriptions of heaven, purgatory, and hell, but she shared her husband’s parliamentary ambitions, hoping that if he won a seat in Congress she would finally secure the vote for women, for which she had fought for the past ten years, permitting none of her numerous pregnancies to get in her way. On this Holy Thursday, Father Restrepo had led his audience to the limits of their endurance with his apocalyptic visions, and Nívea was beginning to feel dizzy. She wondered if she was pregnant again. Despite cleansings with vinegar and spongings with gall, she had given birth to fifteen children, of whom eleven were still alive, but she had good reason to suppose that she was settling into maturity, because her daughter Clara, the youngest of her children, was now ten. It seemed that the force of her astonishing fertility had finally begun to ebb. She was able to attribute her present discomfort to Father Restrepo when he pointed at her to illustrate a point about the Pharisees, who had tried to legalize bastards and civil marriage, thereby dismembering the family, the fatherland, private property, and the Church, and putting women on an equal footing with men—this in open defiance of the law of God, which was most explicit on the issue. Along with their children, Nívea and Severo took up the entire third row of benches. Clara was seated beside her mother, who squeezed her hand impatiently whenever the priest lingered too long on the sins of the flesh, for she knew that this would only lead the child to visualize with even greater accuracy aberrations that transcended reality. Clara was extremely precocious and had inherited the run-away imagination of all the women in her family on her mother’s side. This was evident from the questions she asked, to which no one knew the answers.
The temperature inside the church had risen, and the penetrating odor of the candles, the incense, and the tightly packed crowd all contributed to Nívea’s fatigue. She wished the ceremony would end at once so she could return to her cool house, sit down among the ferns, and taste the pitcher of barley water flavored with almonds that Nana always made on holidays. She looked around at her children. The younger ones were tired and rigid in their Sunday best, and the older ones were beginning to squirm. Her gaze rested on Rosa, the oldest of her living daughters, and, as always, she was surprised. The girl’s strange beauty had a disturbing quality that even she could not help noticing, for this child of hers seemed to have been made of a different material from the rest of the human race. Even before she was born, Nívea had known she was not of this world, because she had already seen her in dreams. This was why she had not been surprised when the midwife screamed as the child emerged. At birth Rosa was white and smooth, without a wrinkle, like a porcelain doll, with green hair and yellow eyes—the most beautiful creature to be born on earth since the days of original sin, as the midwife put it, making the sign of the cross. From her very first bath, Nana had washed her hair with camomile, which softened its color, giving it the hue of old bronze, and put her out in the sun with nothing on, to strengthen her skin, which was translucent in the most delicate parts of her chest and armpits, where the veins and secret texture of the muscles could be seen. Nana’s gypsy tricks did not suffice, however, and rumors quickly spread that Nívea had borne an angel. Nívea hoped that the successive and unpleasant stages of growth would bring her daughter a few imperfections, but nothing of the sort occurred. On the contrary, at eighteen Rosa was still slender and remained unblemished; her maritime grace had, if anything, increased. The tone of her skin, with its soft bluish lights, and of her hair, as well as her slow movements and silent character, all made one think of some inhabitant of the sea. There was something of the fish to her (if she had had a scaly tail, she would have been a mermaid), but her two legs placed her squarely on the tenuous line between a human being and a creature of myth. Despite everything, the young woman had led a nearly normal life. She had a fiancé and would one day marry, on which occasion the responsibility of her beauty would become her husband’s. Rosa bowed her head and a ray of sunlight pierced the Gothic stained-glass windows of the church, outlining her face in a halo of light. A few people turned to look at her and whispered among themselves, as often happened as she passed, but Rosa seemed oblivious. She was immune to vanity and that day she was more absent than usual, dreaming of new beasts to embroider on her tablecloth, creatures that were half bird and half mammal, covered with iridescent feathers and endowed with horns and hooves, and so fat and with such stubby wings that they defied the laws of biology and aerodynamics. She rarely thought about her fiancé, Esteban Trueba, not because she did not love him but because of her forgetful nature and because two years’ absence is a long time. He was working in the mines in the North. He wrote to her regularly and Rosa sometimes replied, sending him lines of poetry and drawings of flowers she had copied out on sheets of parchment paper. Through this correspondence, which Nívea violated with impunity at regular intervals, she learned about the hazards of a miner’s life, always dreading avalanches, pursuing elusive veins, asking for credit against good luck that was still to come, and trusting that someday he would strike a marvelous seam of gold that would allow him to become a rich man overnight and return to lead Rosa by the arm to the altar, thus becoming the happiest man in the universe, as he always wrote at the end of his letters. Rosa, however, was in no rush to marry and had all but forgotten the only kiss they had exchanged when they said goodbye; nor could she recall the color of her tenacious suitor’s eyes. Because of the romantic novels that were her only reading matter, she liked to picture him in thick-soled boots, his skin tanned from the desert winds, clawing the earth in search of pirates’ treasure, Spanish doubloons, and Incan jewels. It was useless for Nívea to attempt to convince her that the wealth of mines lay in rocks, because to Rosa it was inconceivable that Esteban Trueba would spend years piling up boul
ders in the hope that by subjecting them to God only knew what wicked incinerating processes, they would eventually spit out a gram of gold. Meanwhile she awaited him without boredom, unperturbed by the enormous task she had taken upon herself: to embroider the largest tablecloth in the world. She had begun with dogs, cats, and butterflies, but soon her imagination had taken over, and her needle had given birth to a whole paradise filled with impossible creatures that took shape beneath her father’s worried eyes. Severo felt that it was time for his daughter to shake off her lethargy, stand firmly in reality, and learn the domestic skills that would prepare her for marriage, but Nívea thought differently. She preferred not to torment her daughter with earthly demands, for she had a premonition that her daughter was a heavenly being, and that she was not destined to last very long in the vulgar traffic of this world. For this reason she left her alone with her embroidery threads and said nothing about Rosa’s nightmarish zoology.
A bone in Nívea’s corset snapped and the point jabbed her in the ribs. She felt she was choking in her blue velvet dress, with its high lace collar, its narrow sleeves, and a waist so tight that when she removed her belt her stomach jumped and twisted for half an hour while her organs fell back in place. She had often discussed this with her suffragette friends and they had all agreed that until women shortened their dresses and their hair and stopped wearing corsets, it made no difference if they studied medicine or had the right to vote, because they would not have the strength to do it, but she herself was not brave enough to be among the first to give up the fashion. She noticed that the voice from Galicia had ceased hammering at her brain. They were in one of those long breaks in the sermon that the priest, a connoisseur of unbearable silences, used with frequency and to great effect. His burning eyes glanced over the parishioners one by one. Nívea dropped Clara’s hand and pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve to blot the drop of sweat that was rolling down her neck. The silence grew thick, and time seemed to stop within the church, but no one dared to cough or shift position, so as not to attract Father Restrepo’s attention. His final sentences were still ringing between the columns.
| Author | Isabel Allende |
|---|---|
| Original title | La casa de los espiritus |
| Translator | Magda Bogin |
| Cover artist | Jordi Sánchez[1] |
| Country | Chile |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre | Autobiographical novel, Magical realism |
| Publisher | Plaza & Janés, S.A. (Spain) Alfred A. Knopf (U.S.) Bantam (US) |
Publication date | 1982 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| OCLC | 25823349 |
The House of the Spirits (Spanish: La casa de los espíritus, 1982) is the debut novel of Isabel Allende. The novel was rejected by several Spanish-language publishers before being published in Buenos Aires in 1982. It became an instant best-seller, was critically acclaimed, and catapulted Allende to literary stardom. The novel was named Best Novel of the Year in Chile in 1982, and Allende received the country's Panorama Literario award.[2]The House of the Spirits has been translated into over 20 languages.[3]
Search Metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search archived websites Advanced Search. Sign up for free; Log in; Full text of 'The house of the spirits' See other formats. Born in Peru, Isabel Allende is Chilean. She was a journalist for many years and began to write fiction in 1981. The result was the worldwide bestseller The House of the Spirits, which was followed by the equally successful Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, The Stories of Eva Luna, and Daughter of Fortune.Long a resident of Caracas, she now makes her home in San Rafael, California.
The book was first conceived by Allende when she received news that her 100-year-old grandfather was dying. She began to write him a letter that ultimately became the manuscript of The House of the Spirits.[4] However, her novel is heavily influenced by Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
The story details the life of the Trueba family, spanning four generations, and tracing the post-colonial social and political upheavals of Chile – though the country's name and the names of figures closely paralleling historical ones, such as 'the President' or 'the Poet', are never explicitly given. The story is told mainly from the perspective of two protagonists (Esteban and Alba) and incorporates elements of magical realism.
Plot summary[edit]
The story starts with the del Valle family, focusing upon the youngest and the oldest daughters of the family, Clara and Rosa. The youngest daughter, Clara del Valle, has paranormal powers and keeps a detailed diary of her life. Using her powers, Clara predicts that an accidental death will occur in the family. Shortly after this, Clara's sister, Rosa the Beautiful, is killed by poison intended for her father who is running for the Senate. Clara is shocked into muteness after witnessing the autopsy performed on her sister's body. Rosa's fiancé, a poor miner named Esteban Trueba, is devastated and attempts to mend his broken heart by devoting his life to restoring his family hacienda, Las Tres Marías, which has fallen into poverty and disrepair. He sends money to his spinster sister who takes care of his arthritic mother in town. Through a combination of intimidation and reward, he enforces respect and labor from the fearful peasants and turns Tres Marías into a 'model hacienda'. He turns the first peasant who spoke to him upon arrival, Pedro Segundo, into his foreman, who quickly becomes the closest thing that Trueba ever has to an actual friend during his life. He rapes many of the peasant women, and his first victim, Pancha García, becomes the mother of his bastard son, Esteban García.
Esteban returns to the city to see his dying mother. After her death, Esteban decides to fulfill her dying wish for him to marry and have legitimate children. He goes to the Del Valle family to ask for Clara's hand in marriage. Clara accepts Esteban's proposal; she herself has predicted her engagement two months prior, speaking for the first time in nine years. During the period of their engagement, Esteban builds what everyone calls 'the big house on the corner,' a large mansion in the city where the Trueba family will live for generations. After their wedding, Esteban's sister Férula comes to live with the newlyweds in the big house on the corner. Férula develops a strong dedication to Clara, which fulfills her need to serve others. However, Esteban's wild desire to possess Clara and to monopolize her love causes him to throw Férula out of the house. She curses him, telling him that he will shrink in body and soul, and die like a dog. Although she misses her sister-in-law, Clara is unable to find her by any means - the gap between her and her husband widens as she devotes more time to her daughter and the mystic arts.
Clara gives birth to a daughter named Blanca and later, to twin boys Jaime and Nicolás. The family, which resides in the capital, stays at the hacienda during the summertime. Upon arriving at Tres Marías for the first time, Blanca immediately befriends a young boy named Pedro Tercero, who is the son of her father's foreman. Blanca and Pedro grow up together as best friends despite them being of two different social and economic classes. During their teenage years, Blanca and Pedro Tercero eventually become lovers. After an earthquake that destroys part of the hacienda and leaves Esteban injured, the Truebas move permanently to Las Tres Marías. Clara spends her time teaching, caring for her husband's battered body, and writing in her journals while Blanca is sent to a convent school and the twin boys back to an English boarding school, both of which are located in the city. Blanca fakes an illness so as to be sent back to Las Tres Marías, where she can be with Pedro Tercero, but when she arrives home she finds that Pedro Tercero has been banished from the hacienda by Esteban on account of his revolutionary socialist ideas. Pedro Tercero meets with Blanca in secret adopting disguises while also spreading his ideas in the form of song to neighboring haciendas.
A visiting Frenchcount to the hacienda, Jean de Satigny, reveals Blanca's nightly romps with Pedro Tercero to her father. Esteban furiously goes after his daughter and brutally whips her. When Clara expresses horror at his actions, Esteban slaps her, knocking out her front teeth. Clara decides to never speak to him again, reclaims her maiden name and moves out of Tres Marías and back to the city, taking Blanca with her. Esteban, furious and lonely, blames Pedro Tercero for the whole matter; putting a price on the boy's head with the corrupt local police. At this point, Pedro Segundo deserts Esteban, telling him he does not want to be around when Trueba inevitably catches his son. Enraged by Pedro Segundo's departure, Trueba begins hunting for Pedro Tercero himself, eventually tracking him down to a small shack near his hacienda. He only succeeds in cutting off three of Pedro's fingers, and is filled with regret for his uncontrollable furies.
The House Of Spirits Book
Blanca finds out she is pregnant with Pedro Tercero's child. Esteban, desperate to save the family honor, gets Blanca to marry the French count by telling her that he has killed Pedro Tercero. At first, Blanca gets along with her new husband, but she leaves him when she discovers his participation in sexual fantasies with the servants. Blanca quietly returns to the Trueba household and names her daughter Alba. Clara predicts that Alba will have a very happy future and good luck. Her future lover, Miguel, happens to watch her birth, as he had been living in the Trueba House with his sister, Amanda. They move out shortly after Alba's birth.
Esteban Trueba eventually moves to the Trueba house in the capital as well, although he continues to spend periods of time in Tres Marías. He becomes isolated from every member of his family except for little Alba, whom he is very fond of. Esteban runs as a senator for the Conservative Party but is nervous about whether or not he will win. Clara speaks to him, through signs, informing him that 'those who have always won will win again' – this becomes his motto. Clara then begins to speak to Esteban through signs, although she keeps her promise and never actually speaks to him again. A few years later, Clara dies peacefully and Esteban is overwhelmed with grief.
Alba is a solitary child who enjoys playing make-believe in the basement of the house and painting the walls of her room. Blanca has become very poor since leaving Jean de Satigny's house, getting a small income out of selling pottery and giving pottery classes to mentally handicapped children, and is once again dating Pedro Tercero, now a revolutionary singer/songwriter. Alba and Pedro are fond of each other, but do not know they are father and daughter, although Pedro suspects this. Alba is also fond of her uncles. Nicolás is eventually kicked out by his father, supposedly moving to North America.
When she is older, Alba attends a local college where she meets Miguel, now a grown man, and becomes his lover. Miguel is a revolutionary, and out of love for him, Alba involves herself in student protests against the conservative government. After the victory of the People's Party (a socialist movement), Alba celebrates with Miguel.
Fearing a Communistdictatorship, Esteban Trueba and his fellow politicians plan a military coup of the socialist government. However, when the military coup is set into action, the military men relish their power and grow out of control. Esteban's son Jaime is killed by power-driven soldiers along with other supporters of the government. After the coup, people are regularly kidnapped and tortured. Esteban helps Blanca and Pedro Tercero flee to Canada, where the couple finally find their happiness.
The military regime attempts to eliminate all traces of opposition and eventually comes for Alba. She is made the prisoner of Colonel Esteban García, the son of Esteban Trueba's and Pancha Garcia's illegitimate son, and hence the grandson of Esteban Trueba. During an earlier visit to the Trueba house, García had molested Alba as a child. In pure hatred of her privileged life and eventual inheritance, García tortures Alba repeatedly, looking for information on Miguel. He rapes her, thus completing the cycle that Esteban Trueba put into motion when he raped Pancha García. When Alba loses her will to live, she is visited by Clara's spirit who tells her not to wish for death, since it can easily come, but to wish to live.
García, fearful of his growing attachment to Alba, discards her. Esteban Trueba manages to free Alba with the help of Miguel and Tránsito Soto, an old friend and prostitute from his days as a young man. After helping Alba write their memoir, Esteban Trueba dies in the arms of Alba, accompanied by Clara's spirit; he is smiling, having avoided Férula's prophecy that he will die like a dog. Alba is pregnant, though whether the child is Miguel's or the product of her rape is unknown. Alba embraces this ambiguity, however, loving her unborn child as above all, it is her own. Alba resolves that she will not seek vengeance on those who have injured her, choosing to believe in the hope that one day the human cycle of hate and revenge will be broken. Alba is revealed to be the narrator of the novel, which she writes while she waits for Miguel and for the birth of her child.
Main characters[edit]
Some of the characters' names are significant, particularly the women's names, which often indicate the personalities of the characters. The names Nívea, Clara, Blanca, and Alba are more or less synonyms, and this is mentioned as a family tradition. (Nívea means snow-white, and can be translated as 'white' as can all the others, though they have specific meanings.) Férula's name means 'rod' in Latin; when used in Spanish it refers to an object used to immobilize a limb, such as a splint or cast.
Clara del Valle Trueba[edit]
Clara (one of its translations is the equivalent of English 'clear', although it is also a common female name) is the key female figure in the novel. She is a clairvoyant and telekinetic who is rarely attentive to domestic tasks, but she holds her family together with her love for them and her uncanny predictions. She is the youngest daughter of Severo and Nívea del Valle, wife of Esteban Trueba, and mother of Blanca, Jaime, and Nicolás. Even as a child her strangeness is noticed and seen as a threat to many in her community. Otherwise, her family and devoted Nana protect her from her strangeness. She and her uncle Marcos use her powers to run a fortune-telling centre as she develops other paranormal activities like dream reading. Her uncle eventually leaves in a primitive airplane he built himself, disappearing for many months, assumed dead but later is found to die instead as the result of a 'mysterious African plague' contracted during his travels. 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. Severo and Nívea del Valle are main characters in another Allende novel. As Clara grows up, she developed her abilities and is even able to communicate with ghosts and spirits. Clara represents love and cherishment. Clara's marriage to Esteban Trubea is something she accepts but she never truly loves him and knows from the beginning that she will never do so. She is uninterested in material things and takes for granted what is her high economic standing. It is not until later after great tragedy that she takes the role of helper/servant instead of dreamy bystander.
Esteban Trueba[edit]
Esteban Trueba is the central male character of the novel and is one of the story's main narrators along with his granddaughter Alba. In his youth, he seeks the mermaid-like and green-haired Rosa the Beautiful, daughter of Severo and Nívea del Valle, toiling in the mines to earn a suitable fortune so that he can support her. However, she dies by accidental poisoning while he is working in the mines, a cruel stroke of fate that hardens his heart. Although he eventually marries Clara (Rosa's sister and youngest daughter of the Del Valles) and raises a large family, Esteban's stubborn and violent ways alienate all those around him. Esteban has a tense relationship with his daughter Blanca but shows genuine love and devotion to his granddaughter Alba. Despite his often violent behavior, he is also devoted to his wife Clara, entering into a state of permanent mourning following her death. As a self-made man who earned all of his wealth from years of work spent improving Tres Marías, Esteban scorns communists and believes them to be lazy and stupid. Later in life, he turns to politics where he spends his money and effort trying to prevent the rising Socialist movement within the country. However, after the military coup he loses much of his power and suddenly has to face the fact that he has become an old and weak man. Yet it is not the loss of power, so much as the injury done to his country, that agonizes the highly patriotic Esteban. His realization that he desires the love of his family and peace in his country leads to a pivotal change in his character. In his last days, he slowly loses the rage that has been driving him all his life. He begins to make amends with what's left of his family by helping Blanca and Pedro Tercero escape the country so they can live happily and when Alba is kidnapped by the military he asks his longtime friend Tránsito Soto (who had influence in the military) to help him, so he is ecstatic when Alba is rescued. Esteban dies happily, knowing that he has achieved Clara's posthumous forgiveness.
Blanca Trueba[edit]
Blanca is Clara and Esteban's first-born daughter. She spends her childhood between the Truebas' house in the capital and Tres Marías, where she forms an intense connection with a boy named Pedro Tercero García, the son of Esteban's foreman. Their friendship endures, though they only see each other in the summer, and upon adolescence they become lovers. Their love persists even after Pedro is run out of the hacienda by Esteban, because he is putting communist ideas in the other workers' heads. After she becomes pregnant with Pedro Tercero's child, her father forces her to marry Count Jean de Satigny, whom she does not love. After Blanca leaves the Count and returns to the Trueba home, she sees Pedro sporadically, resisting his attempts to persuade her to marry, but their relationship continues. Blanca's reconciliation with her father eventually allows her to flee to Canada with Pedro, where they finally are able to achieve happiness together. Blanca is also able to earn large amounts of money for the first time by selling her clay figurines, which are seen as folk art by Canadians.
Pedro Tercero García[edit]
Pedro is the son of the tenant and foreman of Tres Marías, Pedro Segundo García. At a young age, he falls in love with Blanca and is the father of 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 may be modeled after revolutionary songwriter Victor Jara). After the coup d'état in his country, he and Blanca exile themselves in Canada with Esteban's help. It is mentioned that he resumes his political crusade during his exile in Canada where his music is embraced in translation even if 'chickens and foxes are underdeveloped creatures' in comparison with the 'eagles and wolves' of the North.
Alba Trueba de Satigny[edit]
Alba (Spanish for 'Dawn,' Latin for 'white') is the daughter of Blanca and Pedro Tercero García, 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. Because of this, Clara said she didn't need to go to school and was raised at home until she was seven. 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 child is Miguel's or the product of the rapes that she endured at the hands of security police, during her imprisonment.
Severo and Nívea del Valle[edit]
Severo and Nívea are the parents of Rosa, Clara and several other children. Severo's candidacy for the Liberal Party of Chile promptly came to an end after someone tried to poison him, but got his daughter Rosa instead. Nívea, however, would come to become a prominent social activist for women's liberation. The couple pass away in a gruesome car accident in which Nívea is decapitated and her head lost. The details of the accident were hidden from their daughter Clara, because she was pregnant at the time. However, her intuition brings her to the location of the lost head, which ends up being hidden in the basement since the body had already been buried.
La Nana[edit]
Having served the Del Valle and Trueba families all her life, Nana is close with all the children that she had taken care of, especially Clara. She even takes care of Clara's children after Severo's and Nívea's death. Nana passes away in an earthquake and was buried without fanfare. Her body is later moved to the mausoleum with Clara's and Rosa's bodies.
Rosa del Valle[edit]
The oldest daughter of Severo and Nívea, Rosa was born with green hair and great beauty. Her unearthly beauty intimidated everyone in the village except for Esteban Trueba, who was enamored with her and sought her hand in marriage. Rosa waited patiently while Esteban slowly accumulated wealth working in the mines in order to feel worthy of Rosa. Esteban returns to find that Rosa had died from consuming poison meant for her father. Though never truly forgetting Rosa, Esteban marries her sister Clara instead.
Jaime Trueba[edit]
Jaime is the son of Clara and Esteban Trueba. A shy, bookish and compassionate doctor who treats the poor, he stands out against his outgoing twin brother Nicolas and his cantankerous father. Jaime had always had a strenuous relationship with his father, especially with Jaime's revolutionary ideals. He becomes friends with the Candidate whilst under the impression that the revolution was to be peaceful. Jaime also becomes good friends with Alba, whom he treats as a sister. He is summoned to the Presidential Palace during the coup and was killed for refusing to announce that the president had drunkenly committed suicide. Esteban doesn't believe it until Jaime appears in spirit to Clara, showing her how he had been murdered by the regime.
Jaime may be inspired by the personal doctor Arturo Jiron of the Chilean president Salvador Allende.
Publication history[edit]
- La casa de los espíritus (Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 1982) First edition. ISBN84-01-38011-1
- The House of The Spirits (Westminster, Maryland: Knopf, 12 April 1985) First English language edition. Translated by Magda Bogin. ISBN0-394-53907-9
- The House of The Spirits (London: Jonathan Cape, 4 July 1985) First UK edition. Translated by Magda Bogin. ISBN0-224-02231-8
- The House of The Spirits (New York: Bantam, 1986) First US paperback edition. Translated by Magda Bogin. ISBN0-553-27391-4
- The House of The Spirits (London: Black Swan, 1986) First UK paperback edition. Translated by Magda Bogin. ISBN0-552-99198-8
School curricula[edit]
The novel has been used in a wide number of school curricula around the world, notably for its use of magical realism, and as a translated Latin American novel. Educational organizations such as the International Baccalaureate recognize it as a world literature study book.[5][6][7]
Traditions[edit]
After the debut of The House of the Spirits, Allende began to follow a rule of starting to write all her books on January 8. She is quoted as saying:
In January 8, 1981, I was living in Venezuela and I received a phone call that my beloved grandfather was dying. I began a letter for him that later became my first novel, The House of The Spirits. It was such a lucky book from the very beginning, that I kept that lucky date to start.[8]
Film and theatrical adaptations[edit]
In 1993 the book was adapted 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. While the film won some minor international awards — it was widely viewed as a critical failure[9] (two oft-cited reasons were its diffusely episodic structure and a cast of mostly Anglo American actors in Latin American roles)[10] and a box office bomb (it made back only $6.2 million of its $40 million budget).[11]
The House Of The Spirits Full Textile
The novel has received a theatrical adaptation at Seattle's Book-It Repertory Theatre in 2007.[12][13]
The novel has received another theatrical adaptation written by Caridad Svich, which was commissioned by Repertorio Espanol in New York City, where it premiered in 2009 and received the HOLA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting from the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors. This version was written and performed in Spanish and has been staged in Latin American countries such as Chile and Costa Rica.[14] Svich's English language version of the play is the recipient of the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize on the basis of its production at Denver Center Theatre Company in 2010.[15]
On May 23, 2018, it was announced that Hulu was developing a television series adaptation of the novel with production company FilmNation Entertainment. Allende is expected to serve as an executive producer on the project.[16]
The House Of The Spirits Pdf
References[edit]
The House Of The Spirits Full Textbook
- ^'La casa de los espíritus - Leelibros.com, biblioteca de Sedice'. leelibros.com. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
- ^'Fairfield University : Award-winning author Isabel Allende to speak at Fairfield University'. Fairfield.edu. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
- ^Penalva, Joanna. 'Arts & Culture: Department of Drama Presents ‘The House of the Spirits’,' Syracuse University News (November 7, 2017).
- ^Beard, Alison. 'CREATIVITY: Life’s Work: An Interview with Isabel Allende,'Harvard Business Review (May 2016).
- ^O'Hanlon, Ann. 'STUDENTS, OTHERS DEFEND USE OF CONTROVERSIAL BOOK IN SCHOOL,'Washington Post (December 21, 1997).
- ^Kenna, Mark S. 'WHS Teachers Defend 'The House Of Spirits,' Concerned Parent Moves To File Appeal To Review Committee,'High County Press (NOVEMBER 1, 2013).
- ^O'Connor, Acacia. 'VICTORY! ‘HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS’ STAYS IN WATAUGA COUNTY CLASSROOMS,' National Coalition Against Censorship (February 27th, 2014).
- ^Allende, Isabel. 'Interview,' IsabelAllende.com. Retrieved Oct. 12, 2020.
- ^'The House of the Spirits,' Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved Oct. 12, 2020.
- ^'We’re All Eagerly Counting Down the Days For Isabel Allende’s Work on Print and on Screen,'BELatina Daily (June 24, 2019).
- ^'The House of the Spirits (1994)'. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved August 15, 2011.
- ^'Arts & Entertainment - This old 'House' opened a lot of doors for Isabel Allende'. Seattletimes.nwsource.com. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
- ^'Book-It Repertory Theatre'. Book-It Repertory Theatre. Archived from the original on 12 July 2012. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
- ^'La Casa del los Espíritus' rompe récord de taquilla,' Espressivo theatre (Costa Rica) website (Mar. 2014). Archived at the Wayback Machine. (Spanish)
- ^'Playwright Caridad Svich wins ATCA's 2011 Francesca Primus Prize,' American Theatre Critics Association website (July 8, 2011).
- ^Andreeva, Nellie (May 23, 2018). ''The House Of The Spirits' TV Series Based On Isabel Allende Novel In Works At Hulu From FilmNation Entertainment'. Deadline. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
External links[edit]
- Isabel Allende discusses The House of the Spirits on the BBC World Book Club
- The House of the Spirits at IMDb