Hi blog!!
Bombal’s Shrouded Woman made me feel like I was back at home, being made to watch the evening novelas (the Portuguese word for telenovelas) when my grandma visited our house. What an experience!!
I need to start off by saying that the point of view from which we read this book is genuinely one of the coolest POVs I’ve read from. The changes in time throughout the scenes confused me a bit, but I got used to it. It is such a creative choice, and it works so beautifully.
Onto my thoughts on the actual story. Throughout my reading, I felt like I was watching different characters go through very similar, if not the same exact, cycles our main character goes through in her life. For example, we have Ana Maria and Ricardo’s relationship repeating itself through Anita and Rodolfo. For Ana Maria and Ricardo, we had a teenage infatuation that ended up being one-sided on Ana Maria’s part. But, since they fooled around, Ana Maria got pregnant with his baby. She then tries to use that as leverage to get Ricardo to take responsibility and marry her, hoping he will love her the same way she loves him. In this case, Ricardo claims he has no responsibility for the baby and leaves for Europe, leaving Ana Maria heartbroken, which leads to her losing the baby. On the other hand, we have Anita, Ana Maria’s daughter, who is in love with Don Rodolfo. When he falls in love with Maria Griselda, Anita cannot accept that, so she forces herself onto him and ends up pregnant. Unlike Ricardo, Rodolfo takes responsibility and ends up married to Anita, even if it’s a miserable, loveless marriage. We see this idea of cycles repeating themselves throughout the different generations of Ana Maria’s family over and over in the book, and I found that to be incredibly interesting. This repeating of cycles also really helped to emphasize how important each of these expereinces were to Ana Maria. I thought this was an awesome way to weave a connection between these characters’ lives beyond their biological connection.
But this is not a happy book. In fact, it deals with incredibly heavy topics like suicide and rape. And yet again, we see these topics being emphasized by having them appear in both Ana Maria’s life and the next generation’s lives as well. For instance, we see suicide through Ana Maria almost killing herself after Ricardo rejects her, then Fred’s wife, Silvia, straight up shooting herself in front of him because of Maria Griselda (which, by the way, Maria Griselda is such a tragic character, oh my god, I feel so bad for that woman). Seeing these tragedies repeat themselves feels like watching a horrible cycle repeat itself, and you have no power to stop it. But it also makes for such an interesting reading experience, because Bombal really forces you to recall the previous experiences and to watch as Ana Maria sees things happen again through the lenses of her own children. It was very smart writing, but a very tragic story.
Overall, I liked this read. I do have to admit I searched up a family tree for the characters to make sure I was interpreting everyone correctly, but even then, it was a very interesting novella.
Now, most importantly, as the title of this blogpost suggests, someone needs to make this into one of those ultra-dramatic, streams at 10pm on cable TV, and all the aunties and grandmas watch it, telenovela (also known as a soap opera). The emotional whiplash of some of these chapters was truly insane (like the moment where Ana Maria is saying she hates her husband, and then proceeds to go “ohmygod he has a WRINKLE?!”), and that one scene where Ana Maria and Antonio are arguing? That would have the aunties going CRAZY in front of their tvs and their crochets. AND ALSO the amount of betrayal and cheating? insane. So please, if anyone knows any Latin telenovela producers, let them know this book might be a gold mine for a series.
I leave y’all with this last question- do you guys think Bombal intended to make these coincidental events something akin to a cycle, or do you think they were just coincidences looking to make the reader feel ‘nostalgic’ about previous happenings in the book??
Thank you for reading :))
6 replies on “Someone needs to make a tragic telenovela inspired by this book ASAP”
Now that you mention it… yes, it does have a soap opera feel that I can’t get out of my head. Especially because of what you said about cycles, which is a very common dramatic element in soap operas. Thanks for bringing it up!
Okay, so first of all what a fun read. Definitely agree that this novel had a telenovela (soap opera was the term I used in my own blog) feel to it, with all the crazy complicated relationships and drama. Hopefully a telenovela producer will discover this gold mine, like you suggested.
To answer your question, I think with how significant the theme of family is in the novel, Bombal couldn’t have overlooked the opportunity to create an intergenerational cycle. I think she had to have had at least the slightest idea that this was an important recurrence in stories about family and memories, and even in real life, it’s like you said, “different characters going through very similar, if not the same exact cycles”.
Yes I thought this was so opera coded and I was telling my friend about it and she said it’s exactly like a telanovela. Someone needs to turn this into SOME sort of staged production NOW!!
The parrallels you noticed between the characters was so interesting. Anita and Ana Maria are a generation apart, but the way they handled their romantic relationships with Rodolfo and Ricardo (i mean, even their names sound similar), was similarly obsessive. This obsessiveness may stem from insecurities, or the rigid expectations that this time period set for young people. The parrallel may to trying to show that this goes farther than individual issues, and may be more of a systemic issue (or a byproduct of it)
Thank you for your thoughts! And yes if they turned this into a drama show, I’d definetly tune in to watch
I also agree that this is an interesting choice of perspective! What you note about the parallels and themes reminds me of how maybe, people aren’t immune to their surroundings, so they fall into these cyclical patterns. I do feel like this was intentional in order to note how these characters fall prey to the patriarchal society, just in slightly different manners.
I agree with what you said about how this book would make a great soap opera and while going through other blogs I came across another one that talked about this.