“The Shrouded Woman” is definitely my favourite book so far. I absolutely love the way it was written. In her death, Ana Maria showed us her life through her memories. Out of all the characters Ana Maria interacted with, I was most struck by Maria Griselda. How Maria explained that her beauty was a curse, how it had sentenced her to life of loneliness. I though that it was really sad that in her time, being beautiful was considered a sickness for women. Maria was excluded because of her beauty and hated by other women. Her beauty brought out jealousy from other women in her, Ana Maria hated her but  the hatred faded away after she died. I thought that her story was heartbreaking because her beauty pitted her against other women.

One of my favourite quotes from this novel is: “Why, oh why must a woman’s nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life?” (226). In my opinion, everything Ana Maria did was for a man. Even though this novel is from the point of view of a woman, all of her actions are either influenced or are being coerced by a man. This quote reminded me of something professor Beasley-Murray said in the lecture video: “Dead or alive, a woman remains subject to the gaze of others”. This whole novel is us experiencing Ana Maria’s life through others. We only get to see her memories because people are coming to see her.

I loved the way this novel approached the concept of love. Ana Maria’s relationship with Ricardo was so interesting to read about. She was completely consumed by her love for him. In that period of her life, she lived for him. She couldn’t see a life without him. In her death, she realizes that he never truly left her, he was always a part of her life even if she had not known while she was still alive. Her relationship with him affected her for the rest of her life. Her love for her husband, Antonio, was not the same as what she felt for Ricardo. She settled for Antonio whereas she had chosen Ricardo. Her relationship with Fernando also intrigued me because she felt humiliated by him and yet she did not stop seeing him. There is a quote in the novel that I think perfectly describes the different types of love Ana Maria felt in her various relationships: “that one does not love as one wants to, but only as one is able to”.  I like to think that after Ricardo, Ana Maria was no longer able to love the same way. She changed as a person and so did her ability to love.

Discussion question:

The last sentence of this novel is: “For she had suffered the death of the living. And now she longed for total immersion, for the second death, the death of the dead”. What do you think she meant by “the death of the living”? And what did she mean by “the second death”?