Bombal’s The Shrouded Woman

Hi Everyone!

I am going to be reflecting on Bombal’s The Shrouded Woman in this week’s post. I have to say, I really enjoyed reading this novel! Not only was it easy to follow and understand –unlike our previous two readings:/– but I found it to be really thought-provoking and refreshing. I realize that refreshing may be a weird word to describe a novel narrated by a dead woman, but I think it is still fitting –at least from my perspective– because I found all the reflecting and reminiscing within the novel to, overall, be quite nice.

Despite being wildly different from one another, while reading Bombal’s novel, I found myself drawing a few connections to the previous texts we read in this course. Specifically, when reading all the different ‘trips down memory lane’ that Ana María shares with us, I was reminded of the madeleine cake scene in Proust’s novel, Swann’s Way. ? It was the idea of how experiencing something, like tasting a familiar food, seeing your daughter sob over your dead body, can lead to a flood of memories surrounding that experience to (involuntarily) surface. In Bombal’s novel, Ana María –our dead narrator– reflects on and shares with us memories and stories of each individual who played an important role in her life. Ana María lays there, seeing her friends and family grieve over her, unable to act/ respond to it, yet in her ‘just before death’ stage, she recounts all these memories and shares these stories. Similarly, in Proust’s novel, the madeleine cake scene elicits the same emergence of involuntary memories, a remembrance of things from the past.

Moreover, another resemblance I noticed between Paris Peasant, Swann’s Way and The Shrouded Woman was regarding their structure. Since this novel was focused around Ana María, our dead woman narrator, and her reminiscing over her life while on the brink of death, it can be expected that there wouldn’t have been a linear plot line –such as in Paris Peasant and Swann’s Way as well. Instead, in The Shrouded Woman, Ana María’s memories are presented in a somewhat fragmented and scattered manner. Nonetheless, they are still categorized in terms of each individual, where everyone seems to fall into their own chapter/section. This made it a lot easier to follow and comprehend Bombal’s novel than either Proust or Aragon’s novels since the latter two made use of a less organized (?), non-linear plotline.

Lastly, I wanted to comment on one of the more heart-touching reflections that I personally found in Bombal’s novel: that of Ana María and her daughter. Ana María described her daughter as “having fits of anger, capricious tears, but never […] a wild outpouring of grief [compelling her] to sob…” (249). Moreover, she goes on to say that her daughter was always described as “… cold, hard, even with her mother”, but instead notes that “[she was] not cold, [she was] young, only young” (249). I found this whole section to be extremely heart-warming. I loved the evocative and emotive language used (throughout the novel, but especially) in this section. Moreover, I found that it was this section in particular (probably because of the mother-daughter relationship which means a lot to me) that Bombal’s writing made me reflect on my own relationships and reminisce and recall memories of those who may or may not in my life anymore.

Now on to the question of the post: Which sections/memories stood out to you the most? Did you find yourself reflecting on your own relationships and/or on your own life while reading Bombal’s The Shrouded Woman?

: )