Wow. This was definitely a refreshing change from Breton and his not-so-nice narrator last week. Although both touched on misogyny in one way or another, at least this time it was from the experience of a real woman. To some, that may be more upsetting, but to me, it’s moving. Whether fictional or not, the author of ‘The Shrouded Woman,’ Mar\u00eda Luisa Bombal, was still, in fact, a woman who experienced such things and who is able to construct realistic examples of it for her novel. To read about the societal effects of the oppression of women as a woman is an experience in itself, but to read of the individual effects of constant objectification and marginalization from the point of view of a woman on her literal death bed provides new insight and creates an incredibly moving message. ‘The Shrouded Woman,’ also known as ‘La amortajada,’ follows a woman, Ana Mar\u00eda, the mentioned “woman on her death bed”, as she recounts the events of her life and the memorable people within it. It begins as she lay there unable to move or speak, but able to hear and see the people who gathered there just for her; past lovers, friends, and her husband and her children. impactful memories pertaining to each person, both good and bad, come flooding back to Ana Mar\u00eda, invoking deep reflection and reliving of those memories and the impact they had on her and her life. Overarching themes of Ana Mar\u00eda’s life often have to do with the limitations brought on her by society at that point in time and by some of the men in her life, as they both confine her within the rigid and close-minded expectations of women. A clear example of this would be the disregard and little care shown to her by both Ricardo, her past lover, and her husband Antonio, who both would often not make time for her or treat her with respect. Her reflection and reliving of these moments add to the already intimate and extremely personal atmosphere of the book, only making it more of a powerful, let alone interesting, read.<\/p>\n
An important notion I drew from this book, and what I am sure many others picked up on as well was the overall gratitude for life it sparked within me. When one is faced with a very clear example or experience surrounding death, it can often have the effect of making them grateful for the opportunity of life and all the beauty that comes along with it which is exactly what happened to me. Although fictitious, the action of her recounting all the things and experiences that built up her life until her death is such a unique perspective to take and had a very moving effect for me, especially with her being a female voice.<\/p>\n
To conclude, my question for this week is: Seeing as most of the book is on her memory, how reliable is Ana Mar\u00eda as her own narrator and how would her biases affect the memories recounted?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wow. This was definitely a refreshing change from Breton and his not-so-nice narrator last week. Although both touched on misogyny in one way or another, at least this time it was from the experience of a real woman. To some, that may be more upsetting, but to me, it’s moving. Whether fictional or not, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100357,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11],"tags":[12,16,15,13,14],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-bombal","tag-death","tag-gender","tag-life","tag-memory","tag-the-shrouded-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100357"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}