I feel like every book I’ve picked up so far in this class has just left me confused. I thought books from the 1900s were easier to understand than the ones I read in RMST201, but these books might be more confusing??? Anyway, The Shrouded Woman felt like a novel that exists in this strange in-between: not really the world of the living but not fully removed from it either. The story felt very intimate and with the setting being literally a deathbed, I felt like I was reading someone’s death story and I didn’t belong there at all.
The most striking thing about Bombal’s writing is how she makes time collapse. The narrative does not move in a neat line from childhood to adulthood to death. Instead, memories show up how they do in real life, often triggered by a sound, a touch, or even a presence in the room. Compared to Proust and Nadja, the structure of this book did confuse me at times, but it was definitely an easier read. In this book, time does not matter in a conventional sense but the moments that carried emotional weight do stay.
One moment that stayed with me is when the narrator becomes aware of the people gathered around her body and listens to their reactions during the wake. She cannot move or respond but she hears their words and can sense their emotions, which creates a strange tension between presence and absence. This scene made me feel almost like an intruder as if I were overhearing something private. When she looked at the difference in the way she understands her own life compared to other people, I think she gains a self-awareness that she is no longer part of the living world.
In the book, the people around her are defining who she was but her own thoughts were resisting these interpretations. In this way, The Shrouded Woman felt less like a story about death and more like a reckoning with a life that never fully aligned with the self she carried inside, the person she truly was.
By the end of the novel, my confusion shifted into a sort of discomfort. Bombal does not offer the reader any closure but instead, she leaves us with the awareness that maybe some lives are not built around fulfilment and happiness, but constraint. The language is so beautiful while the sadness of the realization is what makes this novel so haunting.
To end off, my question to you is if the narrator only gains clarity and narrative control after her death, what is Bombal suggesting about women’s ability to understand themselves and express themselves how they want to while they are alive?
5 replies on “The Shrouded Woman: I’m still thinking about this book”
Hi! I love your takes, Shrouded Woman was a good read for me too. To your question, I think Bombal speaks on how women are made to value other things that don’t really matter to the soul while they are alive- namely men, their place in society with/without them, beauty, all these things. They’re told and placed in a structure where this is true, but at the end of the day these things cannot define women. It made me really sad to think about all the lives lived this way, not fully fulfilled.
I really liked how you described feeling like an intruder while reading, especially during the wake scenes that sense of discomfort felt very intentional to me too. I also agree that the novel feels less about death itself and more about realizing how constrained a woman’s life can be while still appearing “complete” from the outside.
I really related to your initial confusion and how you described the novel as existing in an in-between space, that feeling of not quite belonging as a reader came through really clearly. Your point about time collapsing and memories being triggered by presence rather than order helped me think about the structure in a more intuitive way. I also liked how you framed the wake scene as intrusive, especially the tension between how others define her life and how she understands herself. Your question at the end ties everything together really well and gets at one of the most unsettling ideas in the novel.
Hi, I really enjoyed reading your blog and your question at the end got me thinking that Bombal might be suggesting that women don’t fully get control over their own stories while they’re alive. It’s only after death, when social expectations and roles no longer apply and it is then that the narrator can finally reflect freely and honestly. This idea made the novel feel even sadder to me because it seems like clarity comes too late.
I honestly really relate to what you’re saying about the confusion turning into discomfort, that felt spot-on. The way you describe the novel as an in-between space captures why it feels so intrusive, like we’re reading something deeply private that we weren’t meant to witness. I think Bombal is suggesting that while Ana María is alive, her ability to understand and express herself is constantly interrupted by social expectations, marriage, and the roles imposed on her. It’s not that she lacks self-awareness while living, but that she never has the space or permission to fully articulate it. Only in death, when those pressures fall away, does she gain narrative control. It doesn’t come across as empowering so much as deeply sad, like Bombal is pointing out how women are kept from fully knowing themselves while they’re alive, and only gain that clarity once it no longer changes anything.