Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda.

It seems the further we get into this course, the better the novels get. I genuinely enjoyed the read for this week, so much I couldn’t put it away. Maybe because it was easier to read. Speaking of that, I found the stylistic choices and the ‘stream of consciousness’ structure very interesting. Some sentences kept going and going, some started with ‘And’. I remember learning in primary school that sentences should never start with ‘And’, or ‘But’. The way she wrote the whole book felt like a diary entry or a rant on what happened throughout her life, with the lack of direct dialogue and its manner of simply retelling a story. The lack of silences or short sentences even felt like she was breathless at times, or in a hurry.

Anyways, I felt like Quimet was a person with a big personality. He was very charming and charismatic, yet possessive and toxic. Right from their first encounter, I think we can see how he almost turned her into something of his possession, something he owns, by calling her ‘Colometa’, or ‘my little dove’. Throughout the story, he reveals more of his personality by being jealous and mad at her for the littlest things, making everything about himself with his little leg pains, and believing he is in the right for everything . And the tapeworm part was actually very funny to me. Nonetheless, it is clear that she misses him after his death, even when she was in a new marriage. This sorrow is mixed with the anxiety and fear of him possibly being alive and finding out about her marriage, but it indicates his impact on her as a person. She even carves her nickname in the door of her old house when she comes back to it. Despite his toxicity and jealousness, he was a good father and had definitely left a big part of him in her.

I discovered a lot of symbols of femininity and the vulnerable and painful experiences of women and mothers during wars while reading the novel. Starting from the mundane, like the step-mother’s obsession with bows (very coquette), and Natalia spending a copious amount of time staring at the dolls behind the windows at the oilcloth shop, to the awful dilemma she faces as a mother living in difficult times of war and poverty, it all reminded me of womanhood. It was definitely refreshing to read another book written by a female author after all the ones from a male perspective. This brings me to my point, which was written in the title: feminine rage. Throughout the book, Natalia feels powerless and helpless, with her nagging husband, her hungry children, the doves, her difficult work, and it all weighs down on her until she bursts. She didn’t seem like an emotional person, but she relieves her anger and distress by killing the birds or (attempting to) her children. This isn’t to say that her thinking of killing the children was from anger, but it was from pure despair, from exhaustion. It really showed the sorrowful reality of how war affects everyone, especially women and children. I would say Natalia was the strongest woman – she took whatever jobs she could just to keep herself and her children alive, yet she never complained, unlike Quimet. However, it is evident how the series of events put a toll on her.

One more thing I noticed is how much beliefs and superstitions are mentioned in the novel, and in the previous ones as well. The step mother and Senyora Enriqueta seem to say the most, like how birds bring bad luck. It makes me wonder about the culture in the romance countries.

“Senyora Enriqueta told me I had to control myself because if I worried too much, the baby inside would turn over and they’d have to pull it out with tongs.”

My question regards to when Natalia decides to kill her children and herself with the hydrochloric acid.

Would you have done the same thing if you were a mother in despair, without looking back at the grocer?