{"id":79,"date":"2026-01-24T05:53:51","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T12:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/?p=79"},"modified":"2026-01-24T20:23:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T03:23:55","slug":"the-shrouded-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/2026\/01\/24\/the-shrouded-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shrouded Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a book! Within just the first few pages, I felt strangely emotional about Ana Mar\u00eda and her life.. which caught me completely off guard. It almost felt.. relatable? It’s given me lots to think about, that’s for sure. There is something so incredibly intimate about the way she reflects on her life from the perspective of her death. The narration feels raw and unguarded, as she is finally able to reflect in a way she could never do while she was alive. <\/span><\/p>\n

What stuck with me was the clarity Ana Mar\u00eda gains only after death. As a living woman, she is constantly pulled between jealously, love, insecurity, and longing, and all of it kind of blurs together and leaves behind a feeling of restlessness. While reading, I felt like she was always in search for something she just can’t fully grasp. Once dead, she is able to look back on her relationships. Love, in particular, feels extremely conflicting throughout the novel. She wants to be loved and chosen, yet love continuously brings her pain and disappointment. Relationships do not feel stable or comforting, but exhausting. It is something she is constantly trying to navigate. There’s a sense that she keeps circling the same feelings without ever fully escaping them. <\/span>What really hit me was when she asks, “Why, oh why must a woman’s nature be such that a man always to be the pivot of her life?” (226). It felt like a cry of frustration, accompanied by resignation. It felt more tired than angry, which is what made it stick with me while reading.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The novel’s treatment of beauty is another thing that I was captivated by. Beauty isn’t presented as something\u00a0reeing\u00a0or rewarding, but as something that can be isolating and painful. This is shown in Ana Mar\u00eda’s encounter with Maria Griselda, where beauty is described not as a gift, but a burden. Maria speaks of her beauty “as of a sickness, as of a curse,” explaining how it has brought her loneliness, resentment from others, and confinement rather than happiness (202-203). What I enjoyed was how many conflicting emotions about beauty existed at once. Beauty brings admiration, tenderness, and desire, but also control, loneliness, and insecurity. Beauty feels inescapable. It’s something that follows these women and influences the way they navigate the world. It shapes the way they are seen and how they come to define themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the end, I felt overwhelmed. There is much to reflect on, both within the novel and in my own life. Ana Mar\u00eda’s relationships, her experiences with love, her life as a woman and a mother, her friendship with Sofia. Everything was overflowing with feeling. There are so many moments and lines that stayed with me and that I wish to mention… it’s insanity! I feel grateful to have read something so personal and bare.<\/span><\/p>\n

Discussion Question:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Which relationship in the novel stood out to you most, and why?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a book! Within just the first few pages, I felt strangely emotional about Ana Mar\u00eda and her life.. which caught me completely off guard. It almost felt.. relatable? It’s given me lots to think about, that’s for sure. There is something so incredibly intimate about the way she reflects on her life from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107352,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[14,15,16,9,10],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bombal","tag-beauty","tag-death","tag-gender","tag-love","tag-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}