“The Shrouded Woman” by Maria Luisa Bombal

by jenna loupret

I took this photo when I was on vacation with my family in Sooke. If you’ve never been to Sooke it’s a lovely little town 45 mins from downtown Victoria. I’ve always loved it there and coincidentally my boyfriend is from there, though we met at UBC.

After reading so many novels and other pieces of literature written and centered around men, their experiences, and their perspectives, I found reading “The Shrouded Woman” by Maria Luisa Bombal so refreshing. Overall, the whole concept for the novel is really unique, Ana Maria is reexperiencing past memories postmortem with new clarity that she feels she only has because she is dead. As well, the entirety of the novel occurs through Ana Maria’s memories, therefore there is the question of how reliable is this narrative and the events we are seeing?

Throughout all the main events of the novel, Ricardo and Ana Maria’s relationship, Alberto’s marriable and Sylvia’s death, Fernando’s secret love, etc. are all recited through Ana Maria’s memory of them. This is not to say that Ana Maria is necessarily an “unreliable narrator”, only that memory is often polluted by our own biases and perspectives. It makes me wonder, what would this particular story or narrative look like from a completely unbiased, third-party narrator? Is it even possible to tell a story from an unbiased perspective?

Obviously, because the narrator of the story is postmortem, it is hard to portray active character development. However, the first part of the story is heavily focused on Ana Maria as a young woman and her relationships with, her first love, Ricardo, and her brother. Further on in the story, the narrative switches to focus more on her as a mother and her relationship with her children and her husband. An interesting parallel between the two parts of the story is Ana Maria’s contemplated suicide and her daughter-in-law’s suicide. Both involved guns and had similar story arcs, involving unrequited love and overwhelming emotion, but only one of them actually went through with it.

The sunset the other day when I was walking to the Skytrain station:)

Ana Maria doesn’t really dwell on this moment much and doesn’t seem to draw the connection herself which is interesting. I am not entirely sure what the significance is but it’s interesting and worth exploring.