Month: January 2026

Thoughts on Bombal

“But now, now that I am dead, it occurs to me that possibly all men once in their lifetime long to make some great renunciation… in order to feel themselves masters of their own destiny.”

wow….

I really liked this novel. The narration through a “ghost’s” POV made it interesting in a way that didn’t feel confusing or heavy. It was like she moved between memories, emotions, and anecdotes really smoothly, almost like everything was just flowing together

I think the novel reflects on a lot of themes that still feel very relevant. One of them being how women revolve their lives around men. Ana María says it herself: “Why must a woman’s nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life?”(pg.226) This really stuck with me because, even though women in the novel technically have some freedom to choose and live, most of them still base their emotions and day-to-day decisions around men.

We see this clearly in the competition among women: who is prettier? who comes from a higher social class? who is more desirable? The suicide of Silvia was the strongest example of this for me. She kills herself out of jealousy and comparison, over Maria Griselda’s beauty. Or another example is Anita having sexual relations with the guy she loved just to tie him down. Honestly insane, but it shows how deeply women internalize these pressures and insecurities, and how destructive they become.

On the other hand, men are allowed to do as they please in the book. They have affairs and leave women, without facing the same judgment. Antonio and Ricardo both renounce Ana María in different ways, and that renunciation gives them a sense of control (as the quote in the beginning of this blog says). Ricardo convinces himself that he’s meant for bigger and better things, so leaving Ana María “pushes” him to do so. Antonio, on the other hand, only loves her when it’s light and one-sided, and the moment she loves him back, he pulls away and turns cold to stay in control.

Women, on the other hand, are not allowed to do the same, they would be called shameless or sick if they did so. Instead, they are expected to suppress their feelings: love, desire, passion. This repression is framed as “wise behavior.” This idea still exists today. Women are often labeled “too emotional” or “crazy” for caring deeply, which makes this book feel surprisingly current.

Because Ana María spends her entire life repressing her emotions, it makes sense that the moment of real clarity only comes on her “second death”. That’s why the question “Must we die in order to know certain things?” stood out to me so much. I read it as the idea that people often only allow themselves to feel, reflect, and care once someone is gone. It’s only after dying that Ana María realizes how much she mattered to others: Ricardo goes to her grave even though she thought he had erased her from his life, Antonio cries, and her children show grief. She can’t undo the suffering she lived through, but being dead allows her to finally understand it, and in that sense, her death becomes a kind of clarity, almost an act of life.

Do you think this clarity finally “frees” her from the repression she lived her whole life?

artl poverty

karma for lazy boy?

I really liked this book and managed to read it in one sitting, unlike Proust. I read it in the original language, Spanish, and I was a tiny bit lost at first. Honestly, I think it might have been easier for me to read it in English. I don’t know if my Spanish vocabulary has gotten worse or if it’s just Argentine Spanish, but a lot of the slang and expressions were hard to understand. It reminded me of last week’s lecture when we talked about slang and dialect, and how language can be excluding in a way, because I definitely felt excluded as a reader at times. Although I must say, the reality the author shows about Argentina, especially for the working class, feels very present. You see it in the language, in how Italian immigrants still use Italian words.

Getting into the book itself, I really didn’t like Silvio at first. Halfway through the novel, I felt like everything that went wrong for him was mostly his fault. I found him immoral and kind of lazy. When he failed at stealing, it honestly felt like karma. What bothered me was that, at first, he wasn’t even stealing because he truly needed to survive, he did it because he found it fun and exciting. Instead of spending his time working, he chose crime because it made him feel special. When he finally gets a decent job, he sabotages himself by getting drunk. I was mostly just pissed off throughout the book and didn’t feel sorry for him at all.

To me, Silvio felt stuck because of his own mindset. He thought he was better than simple jobs and believed he was destined for something big and great, but he didn’t actually do anything to achieve that. He left school, ruined opportunities, and kept repeating the same mistakes. Even though he read a lot and was clearly smart, he didn’t really put in the effort needed to become what he wanted to be. By the end of the book, I felt like he kind of redeemed himself by not helping Rengo steal(In a way). Still, I don’t think he did it for the right reasons. I didn’t think of it as a moral decision, but more as fear. It felt like he was a coward who just didn’t want to get in trouble, but maybe that’s just my interpretation.

After listening to the lecture, my perspective changed. I started thinking more about how the book shows a different social reality, especially the Argentine social “hierarchy” at the time. For immigrants and “lower-class” people, moving up is extremely difficult, and honestly that hasn’t changed much in South America today. Coming from Peru, I see how middle and upper-class people often blame crime on poor people instead of questioning the system that keeps some people wealthy while others stay poor. In my country, a lot of people can’t access good education, or any education at all, without money.

Seeing Silvio’s failures from this point of view made me realize that things don’t go wrong not only because he’s lazy, but also because the system doesn’t help him. When he gets the apprentice job related to aviation, he’s taken out just because other people with connections need the position. Nepotism and corruption are a huge part of how things worrk in South America, and they keep the same people in power.

I still don’t fully know how to feel about Silvio. It’s been a conflict for me, because I do think there are ways to survive without stealing, but I also get how limited his options were.

I wonder what you guys think. Can both things be true at once? That he was lazy and full of himself, but also stuck in a system that never helped him?

childhood proust

Thoughts on Proust

For me, this whole novel lost me at many parts, but the moments where I did pay attention, it gave me one specific feeling: nostalgia. Proust shows nostalgia exactly as it feels, like being immediately pulled away into the past without choosing to.

First of all, I want to answer the lecture’s questions. What do I look for in a novel? I like authors who “paint a picture” with their writing. It sounds basic, but I enjoy detailed descriptions of places and feelings written in a creative way where you truly feel like you’re there. “There” not only being a physical place, but also a feeling or a mental state that the author wants to convey.

However, I feel like Proust overdid this which leads me to the next question: what did I expect from Proust’s novel? I didn’t know much about the author and even less about the novel, but I expected it to be less complicated and boring than it actually was. That said, I found that many of his descriptions were redundant and unnecessary. What frustrated me wasn’t only their length but the sense that Proust refuses to let the reader move on; everything is dissected so thoroughly that it loses its impact. Instead of nostalgia flowing naturally it felt forced. Yeah, it’s cool how you remember things when you smell something, make a certain movement, or look through a window at a specific light, but honestly it just feels like a pretty common thought that didn’t need to be described as broadly as he did. However, I don’t know if that was his whole point, like trying to extend a memory and not let it get lost, like, enjoy it as much as he could.

One thing I did like was his reflections when he had insomnia. The whole overthinking vibe brought back memories of when I was a child. His descriptions of his family home in Combray made me nostalgic for my own childhood. When we were little, life felt so simple: the greatest happiness was having dinner with family, and the greatest sadness or anxiety came when everyone left, the house went quiet, and you had to go to your room. That feeling stayed with me while reading the novel.

I also liked how Proust treats childhood emotions, especially things adults usually see as trivial, like a goodnight kiss or a bedtime routine. He shows how overwhelming these moments actually feel for a child. This was clear in his relationship with his mother. At first he feels anxious because she won’t come up say goodnight again, then he feels happy when she comes, and then he feels guilty. There are so many emotions going through his mind that adults probably don’t notice. This is shown in a line that really stood out to me because I heard it a lot when I was a kid. When Françoise asks the mom why the narrator was crying, the mom just says: “Why, even he doesn’t know, Françoise”. It really hit me because that’s exactly how adults talk about kids’ emotions. It’s not that the feeling isn’t real, it’s just that as a child you can’t put it into words yet.

Even though I struggled with parts of the novel, the moments that worked really stayed with me. Excited to discuss all this in next week’s lecture!

introduction

Introduction

Hi! I’m Laura. I’m from Lima, Peru, and I moved to Vancouver about four years ago. I’m currently a third-year student pursuing a BA in Economics with a minor in Commerce. If you read that and thought, “This person does not scream literature,” you’d be right. I’m not really a “literature” person, and like many of you, this course is my literature requirement. It wasn’t always like this, though: I used to read a lot. Somewhere along the way, as other responsibilities took over, reading shifted from things I genuinely enjoyed to Econometrics textbooks and other very unromantic topics. Besides Econ and all that, in my free time I enjoy music and like to play guitar, piano, and a few other instruments. Outdoors-wise, I love skiing and swimming in the ocean (I miss the beaches back home, and ofc, the food).

Going back to RMST, when I first learned that the course involved one book per week, I honestly considered dropping it. I’ve always felt a bit out of the loop when it comes to “literary” books. But after listening to the first lecture, I was convinced to stay in the class for two main reasons. First, I was caught off guard when the professor mentioned Inka Cola (the #1 drink in Peru, and somehow triple the price in Vancouver, btw). It was such a random detail that it made me think this was kind of an unusual course, especially with a grading scheme I’d never seen before, and I wanted to see what other random things might come up. Second, I get to read some books in Spanish, which I would much rather than the English translations. Spanish is my native language, and although I went to an international school where English was the main language, my English isn’t perfect. Hence, writing has never been the easiest way for me to express my ideas fully or show my “true personality”, especially in another language. But hopefully, as the semester goes on, these blog posts will start to sound more and more like me.

Now, to answer the question, where is the romance world? My absolute first thought was the logical “in every country where they speak Romance languages”. However, the answer feels too obvious, so I assume I will have a much broader understanding of all this at the end of the course. I am excited to see if I can follow the contract, or will end up giving up during spring break.

Thanks for reading!

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