The Shrouded Woman, in my opinion, really captured the theme of being modern in comparison to the texts I’ve reviewed in previous weeks. There were many different ideas being explored, such as the point of view being someone reflecting on themselves being dead and the main character being a woman, as opposed to a male.
Although Ana Maria, the narrator, is dead, Bombal personifies her body, to the extent of being able to feel, think, and see. This breaks down the wall between the deceased and living, allowing a difficult but interesting concept to be displayed. This is where “making it new” really comes into effect. The fact that this novel is fiction doesn’t matter, it forces us to bond with a character that is no longer living, but convinces us they are, with thoughts and statements that make sense for a deceased person to have. Specifically, the types of thoughts Ana Maria had were understandable. She’s not hung up on everyday thoughts, but on the most significant of thoughts. For example, her teenage years and love interests early on in life, things that she brought her joy or that she would have done differently. Whereas an ordinary person would just be thinking about what they’re going to eat today. Bombal really found a way to bring a dead person to life, by identifying the truest of events in their life that they would reminisce on if they could. It made me think about how often we think about things that don’t matter, the most miniscule of things – to a point where it almost brought me confidence. To a point where I feel like I may think and live a little differently, or try to at least, with thinking more about the bigger picture and not so much dwelling on unimportant things.
Something that stood out to me was in some of Bombal’s description, particularly the repetition she uses. It reminded of my own story writing, but even more of Edgar Allan Poe’s writing in certain passages. Like in section 3, “the rain falls, finely, obstinately, quietly. And she listens to it falling. Falling on the rooftops, falling until it bends the high heads of the pine trees and the broad arms of the blue cedars, falling. Falling until it drowns the clover and obliterates the paths, falling.” The many different ways of describing one short event involving rain, and extending it like its own story from one detail to another. I especially enjoyed areas of the text like this, as it made it feel familiar to me.
Now I ask, why do you think Bombal took the approach of a deceased main character as the narrator of her story? It may be because Bombal is trying to shock us or make us uncomfortable by relating to a deceased character or maybe it’s just the initial idea Bombal had. Regardless, this approach really brought another element to the theme of modern writing for me.
I agree with your claim that “The Shrouded Woman” is very characteristic of modernity, from the main character being a woman and the unique narration. I felt that the narrator being deceased contributed to the story being a more honest retelling (but still absolutely biased), because Ana Maria no longer had to live through the drama and emotion of her life, in which her thoughts could have very real consequences. That “honesty” is also sort of reflected in what you mentioned about the repetition, where she goes back to the same thoughts over and over again sometimes; that made it seem more like a stream of thoughts comprising some coherent story to me.
Hi! Great post! To answer your question, I do believe that Bombal took this approach to add a certain shock value to the whole text but also to shed light on the power of hindsight. By making a dead person ponder about the past, Bombal is able to highlight the power of reflection and the importance of living even more poignantly.
I think it’s a novel way for Bombal to anthropomorphize her body to express this view, process, and experience of death when she writes. At the same time when I was reading my feelings, I imagined if my soul would experience these too if I died. And I think writing like this makes us look at the story like Schrödinger’s cat.