From only the first few pages in, I already felt the effect of Rodoreda’s writing style- many instances seem like a whirlwind or a snapshot of events, with the narration of someone who sort of seems like they’re always rushing to a get to their point yet they also seem to be constantly rambling about something. Particularly for Natalia’s point of view, a lot of times it almost seems as if life is just happening TO her- like all these events, even the more mundane ones, are like cards that are just being dealt to her and she just happened to be there. I mean once the war starts this is obviously the case but even before this, in the most normal day to day occurrences, she speaks as if things were sort of being done “to” her, and I guess it really does translate a certain sense of vulnerability and I guess helplessness in a lot of situations she is in. I think this feeling is both relevant in the context of gender as well as class.
To be honest, I accidentally confused this novel to be another where the quick summary was about a female character being constantly physically abused by their husband (I think it might’ve been an old novel for the last RMST class or something) so that sort of impacted my view of Quimet from the get go (as in I hated tf outta him whenever he showed up even when he didn’t really do anything yet), but after I read the part where he died I got really confused and went back to check and realized my mistake. So all this is to sort of preface that I might’ve have a warped opinion on him. But between Natalia and Quimet’s relationship, I found that this helpless tone of the narration really highlighted the gender roles within their relationship, and to some degree I feel that it is because of the position Natalia was in that in a lot of ways shapes her voice in the novel. Like she isn’t able to just tell her husband “I don’t want those damn birds in the house anymore”, she has to go and secretly get rid of them in her own ways. So the emotional tone of this story I think conveyed really well the positions that Natalia was in, wrestling with one horrible thing after another.
My question to all this week is: Do you think this was the saddest story we have read by far? if yes why, and if no which one was it for you?