“The Shrouded Woman” by María Luisa Bombal, follows a woman named Ana-Maria takes over the book with how she is the symbol of femininity and, in today’s world, is pleasing to the “male gaze.” It definitely may not be intentional, but she does end up being a vocation for three men. As seen in this part of the text:
Though, the struggles that Ana- Maria faces in her life, for simply being a woman, sums up Bombal’s The Shrouded Woman. This was the messiest book I read thus far in my life. The story was going so fast and everyone in the book was acting feral (I don’t know how else to describe it.) Legitimately, there can’t be a world where everyone is after each other, even though there is no mutual feeling of love between any of the ‘couples’. New characters were introduced out of nowhere, like the Alberto guy. I think because it’s supposed to be a fiction, that maybe those things don’t make sense. Or, my life is just boring, and I’m not seeing this much stupidity, considering they seem like they’re grown adults. I know how women are perceived (after all, I am one haha), but I still think it’s so wild that these multiple men are willing to ditch their partners and go after a married woman. Perhaps that’s what the book was trying to prove, similar to ‘Combray’; women are these mystical ideas, and not people with feelings, self-agency, and thought. Poor Maria though, her telling these stories of her life from her grave (literally a dead person’s POV), saying how grateful she is to be dead. Her living was like she was dead, as she mentions somewhere at the beginning of the book. At another point in the book, dead Ana- Maria shows how she sees other people seeing her life. Particularly this text stood out to me from Fernando, one of her lovers:
It goes to show the importance of how the quality of life is something that many people think about. Everyone wants to live a fulfilled, best life, knowing they will be satisfied when they die. However, realistically, not many of us will get to a point of life where we will feel ok with dying ever because life experience is endless! There is so much that you can experience, so how will you know it’s a death that you will be ok with? I’m throwing away a bunch of philosophical questions and debates. It’s odd though to think how Ana- Maria was still ok with dying, despite living a life where her marriage was unloving, a family that didn’t see her as a person with feelings, and overall her depressed life that consisted of having an alcohol dependency. “The Shrouded Woman” is a book that helped me see that side of death where one can be content with death. Whereas some books usually focus on writing about a life that they regretted, from a dead person’s POV. I still cannot get myself to like the book, though. It feels surface-level, so many storylines at once, and the writing is way too wordy to get to the point.
Question: There are a bunch of little questions in my blog that you can answer to.
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Did anyone also dislike reading the book? And why?
“This was the messiest book I read thus far in my life.”
Oh, that’s an interesting observation, which I hadn’t considered. So did Ana María have a “messy” life, do you think? Is she trying to figure out an order to all that mess now that it’s over?
Unpacking her messy life is probably what she was doing, however to a reader it can be annoying. It was not appealing to a me at all. Maybe if the book was structured a little more, I wouldn’t dislike it as much.
I honestly liked it… I thought it was easy to read and just fun, lots of drama, soap opera like. It didn’t feel nearly as grounded in reality as the other two (proust and breton), but I think there is something sincere in the over-the-top-ness of it all. Although it was definitely messy and silly at times, I actually found myself crying more than once (maybe that says something about me). I felt emotional in the part towards the end of the book where she describes moving in with her husband and feeling so alone in his house and his area and needing to move home to her family, and then again at the end.
I don’t know why it hit me emotionally, but it did.
Dalia Currie
I loved this book – there was so much going on and so many interesting characters. I think the reason Ana-Maria was content to fully die and become on spirit or whatever was not because she was depressed or anything, but she saw all the events that had passed in her life, she saw the people she had spent loving or hating, and realized it didn’t matter anymore. That she could just be free of it and rest. I think it was a really beautiful end to your term “messy” (which I love!) book. Great blog post!!
Personally, I liked how Bombal had written Ana Maria’s peace at her funeral. It is very fun to read (especially about her chaotic marriage), and there is a layer of insight regarding her perspective about life and death. I think Ana Maria is okay with death because it just happens to mark the end of her life. That it is the end of suffering, and also liberation from life. Anything she went through doesn’t really matter anymore. She could just leave and rest forever in peace.
Hi, Adia. Thanks for your sharing. I found this book very interesting, and to be honest I didn’t hate reading it. I thought it would be cool if people could actually see and hear what happened in reality after death. And I think for a person who feels pain while alive, death should be a relief.
Hi Adia! I also found it interesting how Ana Maria was okay with dying after detailing the hardships of her life that she had experienced, because honestly I got mad for her while reading this book lol. To answer your question, I liked the storylines of this book, especially when Ana Maria details her marriage to Antonio, but I did feel like I sometimes got lost in who was in the scene and whose perspective I was reading.