First of all, this was the kind of book I envisioned reading when I enrolled in Romance studies. To answer the question in this week’s lecture video, the characteristics of this fictitious world of Bombal stand out to me as being patriarchal and unfulfilling.

Ana-Maria, our dead narrator, reflects on the people who impacted her life and the choices she made, and what stands out to me is that the people who get the longest passages were men. Ricardo, Antonio, Luis, and Fernando, all get longer passages of retrospective interpretation than her daughters, for example, who only got a small paragraph. To me, this is indicative of the patriarchal society that forced women to find fulfillment in men since they could not have a vocation of their own; men provided a purpose for Ana-Maria, despite the frustration they each caused. Ana-Maria questions this as she reflects, “Why oh why must a woman’s nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life?” (227). Each of these men caused her frustration, pain, and misery, yet their impact on and involvement in her life was evidently profound and significant. For example, she explicitly describes her hatred for Fernando and his constant affection because it was annoying, but as she introspects from the grave she realizes that she actually liked his attention; “From that moment on, in order to feel myself alive, I needed your constant suffering by my side” (page 214). This again indicates the male-dominated and male-centered life that Ana-Maria lived, men gave her a purpose in life, proclaiming for example that she needed Fernando’s attention to feel alive. I don’t get the sense that Ana-Maria’s life was fulfilling, I mainly got the sense that she spent a lot of her life frustrated by the men in her life and seeking their validation.  

I also appreciated the comments the narrator made about the fragility of men’s emotions. These comments signaled a reference to the toxic masculinity that comes with patriarchal ideology; “With that curious blinking of the eyes, he always displayed as a boy when under the stress of real emotion” (176), “And he will suffer in solitude, rebellious against any reference to his affliction, against the slightest display of sympathy” (178), “And for days, for months, perhaps for years, he will go on mute and resigned, fulfilling that part of sorrow destiny has assigned to him” (178). I see these comments as empowering to women’s strength of being able to display and feel our emotions, despite the label we often receive as being too emotional, compared to the downfall of men who suffer in silence under the patriarchy to adhere to the standards of toxic masculinity. 

Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, but I found a lot of the narrator’s feelings about love to be relatable. I feel lucky to live in a time and a society where a woman’s purpose comes from far more than a man, but the way that Ana-Maria describes the infatuating feeling of being in love, the pain of heartbreak, or the frustration of men, felt relatable and made reading this novel more enjoyable for me than the past two novels. I liked this line specifically: “All men are cowards” (180). 

My question for my classmates is, what do you think the impact of having a dead narrator is?