I really enjoyed this week’s reading of The Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal. Compared to the previous week’s, I didn’t have too much of a hard time finishing or understanding the text. Honestly, while reading the Shrouded Woman, at least at the beginning, it felt personable. Life is SO demanding as it is. As Ana Maria recounts her memories as a dead person we share her thoughts of feelings of high expectations of ourselves and others, responsibilities, commitments, social pressures, and so much more. Yet, we still have time to find love in different ways.<\/p>\n
As Ana Maria, narrates her journey through the past, she relives her young love for Ricardo. While reading, I like to picture the scenes. All I could picture were coming of age scenes where it almost looks too good to be true. Until true colors are shown later on. Let me highlight a few lines I underlined in the book.<\/p>\n
“During three vacations, I was yours.” (p 165)<\/p>\n
“I’ll go and what’s more I’ll never come back.” “You returned the next day and I threw myself into your arms.” (p 166).<\/p>\n
“Oh the torture of first love, of the first dillusion!” (p 167)<\/p>\n
“You had marked me” (p 168)<\/p>\n
The tone and diction used like “I was yours” really illustrate the intense and passionate feelings of Ana Maria’s first love. This is what I consider personable. Whether we have had our first love or not, we have all felt ‘passion’ in some way or another and this is something the reader can relate to. It made me want to continue reading! From feeling such passion, we come to a halt when Ricardo abandon’s Ana Maria and denies the complete possibility of being the father of her child.\u00a0 This unfortunately is the reality of many young marginalized and disadvantaged women who fall pregnant and are not sure of what to do. There are many young BIPOC women and girls that lack the resources for sexual health and are not in an environment to ask questions. Whether it may be due to their own fears and insecurities or their beliefs, values and socialization. Sexual health matters should be addressed more transparently in schools. However, that is just my personal opinion and besides the point. I feel as though even though the realities of disadvantaged youth and Ana Maria are polar opposites, they share relatability. Reality hits and the question is, ‘What now?’<\/p>\n
Food for thought:<\/p>\n
Since we’re on the topic of food… If you want late night sweets get an apple pistachio strudel from Breka Bakery. so good!<\/p>\n
Thank you for reading! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I really enjoyed this week’s reading of The Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal. Compared to the previous week’s, I didn’t have too much of a hard time finishing or understanding the text. Honestly, while reading the Shrouded Woman, at least at the beginning, it felt personable. Life is SO demanding as it is. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85084,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/marieblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/marieblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/marieblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/marieblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85084"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/marieblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/marieblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/marieblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/marieblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/marieblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/marieblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}