Sobre la autora
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Chile,
1910-1980
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Part of the higher social class
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Was not an extensive writer, but wrote
powerfully in the few works she published
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Themes of eroticism, surrealism, and feminism (not exactly a feminist, but wrote about female concerns)
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She was one of the first prose writers in Chile
to break away from the realist movement (Langowski)
Comps Example Question
The historical vanguards
(especially surrealismo, negrismo, and creacionismo) and their impact on modern narrative, poetry, and
theater. Authors: Bombal, Huidobro, as well as periods of Vallejo and Neruda;
Guillén. Some suggested readings:
Unruh, Osorio, Nelson, Verani, Videla de Rivero.
La última niebla (1935)
Summary
Resumen de la obra (Langowski, pg. 47)
“El argumento de La última niebla es bastante sencillo. Una mujer joven y bella se
casa con Daniel, también joven y recientemente enviudado. Se describe a Daniel
como una persona que no puede olvidar el amor que sentía por su primera esposa.
Esta situación peculiar presenta un problema. Por ejemplo, no puede consumar su
segundo matrimonio ni mostrar afecto mínimo hacia su nueva esposa. En cambio,
se pinta a ésta como mujer extremadamente deseosa de placer sexual, que llega a
un estado de perturbación excesiva por falta de atención. Al fin, inventa un
amorío ilícito, que ella llega a creer hecho real. Pasa su vida en constante
anticipación de la vuelta de su amante. Con el correr de los años, se da cuenta
de que todo ha sido una ilusión, y trata de suicidarse echándose delante de un
automóvil. Daniel le salva la vida creyendo que ella se había distraído
momentáneamente. La novela termina con la implicación de que la mujer tendrá
que enfrentarse con la realidad sin la ayuda de su antigua existencia
ilusoria.”
Characters
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Protagonist/narrator – unnamed young woman,
married to Daniel
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Daniel – husband (and cousin) of narrator, aloof
and neglectful
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Felipe – Daniel’s brother, Regina’s husband
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Regina – Felipe’s wife, Daniel’s sister-in law
Themes/ideas
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Estilo de escritura
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First person
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Present tense
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Style
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Very strong language – evocative
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Surrealist influence
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Conscious vs. subconscious worlds
o
Fantasy/dream
o
Use of evocative language
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Gender, female perspective
o
Failed marriage
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Symbolism
o
Mist (niebla, neblina)
§
Adds to blur between reality and dream
o
Water
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The pond
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Use of silence
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In her marriage
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Between protagonist and her imagined lover
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Desire (sexual)
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Is a key factor in the invention of this
imaginary lover
Notes from text
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Protagonist and Daniel arrive at his house after
having gotten married that morning (15)
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He hasn’t told his servants that he was getting
married
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His first wife, who he was very in love with,
died 9 months ago (after they had been married 3 months)
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Daniel is somewhat passive-aggressive with
protagonist; says he knows her “too well,” doesn’t even need to get her naked
because he already knows what she looks like (15)
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Change in Daniel after his first wife’s death –
fear of being alone (16)
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Daniel says protagonist is lucky to have married
him – idea that she had no other options (16)
o
“¿Te
hubiera gustado ser una solterona arrugada, que teje para los pobres de la
hacienda?”
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Daniel starts to cry when he enters the bedroom
with the protagonist for the first time, remembering his ex-wife. Protagonist
doesn’t know what to do; they don’t consummate their marriage (16-17)
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Funeral of a young girl that has died (17)
o
Reflection on the word “silence”
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First view of a mist
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Protagonist’s fear at the mist (18)
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“Y
porque me ataca por vez primera, reacciono violentamente contra el asalto de la
niebla”
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Idea of a forgotten dream (18)
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Daniel’s brother Felipe has arrived with his
wife Regina to visit them with another man (18)
o
Protagonist sees Regina in embrace with
different man
o
Protagonist is jealous of relationship between
Regina and her lover (the other man)
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“Mi
peinado se me antojaba, entonces, un casco guerrero que, estoy segura, hubiera
gustado al amante de Regina. Mi marido me ha obligado después a recoger mis
extravagantes cabellos; porque en todo debo esforzarme en imitar a su primera
mujer, a su primera mujer que, según él, era una mujer perfecta” (18).
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Protagonist has some major lust going on – wants
to get laid! She gets naked and goes swimming in the pond, and admires her own
body (19)
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The men go out hunting for the day, protagonist
is left alone in silence with Regina (20)
o
Protagonist has a little moment with Regina’s
lover when the men return (21)
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The whole family goes to the city – visit
Daniel’s mother (22)
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While in the city, the protagonist goes out on a
walk one night when she can’t sleep, and this is when she meets her “lover”
(22-25)
o
Reflects on boring routine of her marriage…
“will always be the same until I’m old and wrinkly”
o
Feeling
of inability to escape – “La muerte me parece una aventura más accesible que la
huida” (23)
o
Meets a man (“un desconocido” à
“mi amigo”), who takes her to a house, where they have sex (23-25)
§
Silence – they don’t say anything
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“casi sin tocarme” (24)
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Sense of satisfaction in being appreciated for
her beauty
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Years pass; protagonist watches her body age.
Tries to think it doesn’t matter since her body knew love once (26)
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“Noche
a noche, Daniel se duerme a mi lado, indiferente como un hermano. Lo abrigo con
indulgencia porque hace años, toda una larga noche, he vivido del calor de otro
hombre” (26)
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“Mi
amor por ‘él’ es tan grande que está por encima del dolor de la ausencia. Me
basta saber que existe, que siente y recuerda en algún rincón del mundo…” (27)
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Ten
year wedding anniversary (28)
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Protagonist sees her lover again, while swimming
in the pond… she shouts to the servant boy Andrés, who says that he has seen
the man pass and smile at her as well (28-29)
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Protagonist shouts out to lover in the woods and
imagines that she hears his response (30)
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“Hacía años que Daniel no me besaba” (31) – but
they have sex one day; he sees his ex-wife in her
o
“encontrando
siempre el recuerdo de la muerta entre él y yo”
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“Me
sentía sin valor para morir, sin valor para vivir”
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Protagonist feels that she has betrayed her
lover by having sex with Daniel
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Protagonist finds some happiness during the
summer now that she and Daniel are having sex again (32-33)
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Protagonist wants to go out walking one night,
and husband Daniel says she’s crazy – protagonist reminds him that she did it
once before (several years ago) and he denies it… she begins to doubt the
existence of her lover (34)
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Protagonist wants servant Andrés to confirm the
existence of her lover since he supposedly saw him one day – but when she looks for him, Andrés has suddenly
died (35)
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“Mi
amante es para mí más que un amor, es mi razón de ser, mi ayer, mi hoy, mi
mañana" (37)
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Some accident – Regina is dying and they have to
go to the city. Regina has shot herself in her lover’s house, but isn’t dead
yet. (37-39)
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In the city, protagonist goes looking for the
place where she met her lover but can’t find it… she suddenly thinks she has
found the house they went to, but they tell her the man of the house there died
more than 15 years ago (40-41)
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Regina in the hospital… protagonist is jealous
of her for the strong reality of her situation, rather than the protagonist’s
own doubts and insecurities (42)
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Protagonist considers suicide, but thinks it’s
worthless since she’s already so old and ugly (43)
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The idea of the absolute flatness of
protagonist’s future – no hope for anything better (44)
General Ideas (from
class)
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Idea of the perfect bride as a dead woman
(Daniel’s deceased first wife)
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Beauty in youth, frozen beauty
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Idea that you can only be beautiful when you’re
young; association of age with ugliness
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She has to keep hair pinned up
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Symbolism of restriction, constraint
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Protagonist’s disconnect with her own body
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Needs validation from others (example: from
lover)
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Idea that her body is useless until her lover
sees it – she’s incomplete before this experience
“El árbol” (1939)
Characters
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Brígida – protagonist, unhappily married woman
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Luis – her elderly husband, who she eventually
leaves
Summary
Young woman, Brígida, is
at a piano concert and reflects back on her failed marriage. Provoked by the
songs of the concert, she enters into a dream-like world of memory and goes
through memories of her adolescence and marriage chronologically. Her marriage
to her old husband, Luis, was unsatisfactory due to a lack of communication and
his lack of love and passion for her. She deluded and distracted herself by
hanging out in her dressing room and staring at the rubber tree outside the window.
When the tree was chopped down, she realized her unhappiness and ended her
marriage. The story ends at the end of the concert, which corresponds in the
subconscious world to the tree’s being chopped down.
General Ideas/Themes
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Idea of this story as a sort of female,
abbreviated version of a “Bildungsroman”
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Influence of surrealism
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Fading between dream and reality
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Importance of memory
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Conscious vs. subconscious worlds
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Play with sense of time (temporalidad) – mix of
past and present, starts in present/future but then goes back through past to
tell the story
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Flashback
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Symbolism of tree
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The tree represents the permanence and stability
of marriage, that one day, is abruptly destroyed, leaving only a lack of
communication and love between two humans
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Idea of beautiful illusion vs. ugly reality (the
ugliness of street when tree is torn down)
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Sordidness, dirtiness, filth – of world outside
(street), and of life
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Use of music (classical – Mozart, Chopin, etc.)
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The music is all during the “present,” at the
concert, this is what subtly links the “present” and the recollection of the
“past”
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Abrupt transitions
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Use of silence
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Sense of fantasy – abrupt transitions, vague
references to fragments of classical music
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Abrupt changes of emotion, confused emotion
(example: when she wakes up and then when she goes into dressing room)
“Las islas nuevas” (1939)
Characters
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Yolanda – protagonist (sort of); middle aged
single woman
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Federico – Yolanda’s brother
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Don Sylvester – Yolanda’s ex-fiancé
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Juan Manuel – Yolanda’s lover later on
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Elsa – Juan Manuel’s fragile wife, dead 5 years
before story begins
Summary
“New Islands”, written by
woman author Maria Luisa Bombal is a short story about several main characters.
The author is known for writing her stories in a mood halfway between reality
and dream world and this is exactly what she has done in this story. The main
characters of the story are Yolanda, her brother Federico, her ex fiancé Don
Sylvester, Juan Manuel, Juan Manuel’s mother, Juan Manuel’s dead wife Elsa, and
Juan Manuel’s son Billy. Don Sylvester received a letter from Yolanda thirty
years ago and he is still confused about why she left him. In the letter she
starts with “Sylvester, I cannot marry you. Believe me, I have thought over at
great length. It isn’t possible. It just isn’t” and she ends the letter with “I
weep, Sylvester, I weep; and I cannot explain myself – Yolanda.” Sylvester sees
her again thirty years later but she wont talk to him and he is stuck with no
answers. Some intimacy evolves between Yolanda and Juan Manuel but once again
she is scared to commit and tells him to leave. Is it because she is very sick
and scared that she will die soon? No one knows. Yolanda has some dreams,
sometimes they are nice dreams, and sometimes they are bad dreams. There is
something about her that is left unsaid. Is she an angel or maybe a fairy?
Several hints draw the reader to either one of these conclusions. “Her right
shoulder – on which something light and flexible looms, drooping down to cover
a small portion of her back. A wing, or rather, the beginning of a wing. Or
more exactly, the stump of a wing. A small, atrophied member which she now strokes
carefully, as if dreading the touch.” (Bombal, 202) Could it be that she has
some weird disease and wants to save the two men from getting more attached to
her because she is scared she is about to die? Juan Manuel leaves to go home to
see his son. He calls Yolanda because she seems to still be on his mind but he
hangs up the second she answers. He says that he is afraid of the truth and
that the “sweet and terrible secret” of her shoulder lay in her dreams.
(Bombal, 205) The story has a lot of things to discuss and it leaves the reader
with a lot of unsettling doubts. What impact did the islands have to the story?
What was with Yolanda’s dreams? Why could Yolanda not be with Sylvester or Juan
Manuel?
Themes
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Dream
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Yolanda’s nightmares all the time
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Gender, female concerns
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Yolanda as the unhappy old-ish single woman
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Death of Juan Manuel’s frail wife (5 years
before story’s time period), idea of women as fragile
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Idea of female beauty as fragile – also,
descriptions of Yolanda’s hair as thick and long (Bombal always writes about
hair…)
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Death, aging
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Juan Manuel’s dead wife, Elsa – she stays the
same as he ages
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Writing style
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No real protagonist – alternates between Yolanda
and Juan Manuel
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So many things left “unfinished” – no real
ending/conclusion; never any explanation about the islands or why Yolanda didn’t
want to marry Sylvester or anything……
