Death – RMST Blog Avery

If you’ve read some of my blogs before you may remember me as the girl who was scared while reading the shrouded woman because of her constant worry of death…yup you could imagine my joy reading this book, I’m joking, I actually really enjoyed this book, even with the constant talk about death (maybe I’ve accepted fate??? Who knows), Before I get into my opinion on this book I wanted to relate it to another book that I’ve read called “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V.E Schwab, It’s a pretty popular book so some of you may have read it, but it’s special to me because it was the first book I read, during the blazing Vancouver summer of 2021, that got me hooked into reading, One of the first books in a long time that I had truly enjoyed, It’s a Fantasy Fiction/ Historical Fiction and I felt it was similar to “Death with Interruptions” by José Saramago, it speaks a lot about memory and a similar “what would happen if…” story that makes you reflect on how things are, maybe not super similar but I got the same vibe, Now as I said before I really enjoyed this novel, “what would happen if everyone in one area just stopped dying one day?” is essentially the simple summary, out of all the novels we’ve read so far this one raised the most questions for me, One of my first thoughts about this was what would happen to the crimes that are punishable by death? Would people commit these crimes with knowing they cant be punished by death? Or would they even be able to commit the crime as most crimes that are punishable by death are murders? There are so many things brough up in this book that I didn’t even think about, like how immortality would effect politics, jobs like funeral workers, healthcare workers (which in honesty it sounded like their situation of the hospitals getting filled up is similar to our own situations today, at least headed in that direction), how it effects religion, and even the suffering of those about to face death described, I also think the choice to turn death into a female personification was an interesting choice, to anthropomorphize death and give her feelings of remorse for the decision to make everyone immortal, I feel the lesson from this book is to not get in the way of death and it’s plans, anyways I really did enjoy this book and am excited to discuss it further,
It also seems I forgot how to use a period, oops, how very Saramago of me.

My question to you is how would you spend you pre-death week?

The Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal constantly made me think of memories and death, honestly I didn’t enjoy this aspect of the story, let me tell you why. Often I worry about death and ending and spend a lot of my time fearing them, something I am trying to get over. I often worry about everything really (you could ask any of my family and friends) from earthquakes to crashing planes. So what I didn’t enjoy about this book was the constant looming of death over the entire novella. With every sweet memory the author spoke of I found myself almost forgetting they were dead, I was going through a roller-coaster of emotions.

I think if I passed away I wouldn’t want to be able to think of all my memories. I think I would ponder on them too much, even thought I would be dead, and the anxiousness of what could’ve been if I had done things differently would overtake me. I don’t think I would enjoy that very much.

What I did enjoy about this novel was it was much easier to follow than some we have been reading. In no way am I saying I enjoyed the other books we’ve read less, they were just more of a challenge to dissect. This felt a lot more digestible. Something that did, however, throw me off at points was the point of view, sometimes I couldn’t really figure out who was telling the story. This could just be my own confusion but I also believe that the point of view is what made this novel so unique.

Throughout the story there was a lot of descriptions of nature, lots of forests, rivers, and storms. It all made me think of Mother Nature and the give and take of nature in relation to the story. In a way I think Ana Maria was Mother Nature as she accepts her deaths and just wants to “feel the grass grow, new islands emerge, and on some other continent, the unknown flower bursting open that blooms only on a day of eclipse” (pg.259). There was a sort of mystical-ness to the story as Ana-Maria travelled through what seemed to be a sort of in between of her life and death, an opportunity to silently observe and recall given to her by a figureless light. Sometimes nature represented this in-between with forests and snow.

I also noticed lots of underlying proto-feminism with Ana-Maria, I feel like at this time a story from a women’s point of view, with such a life that Ana-Maria lived, was perhaps a little scandalous. She brings a lot of awareness to the struggles of women, their emotions and their passion, coming to some very forward thinking (for that time). We see this in page 226 when she says “Why, oh why must a woman’s nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life?”. I personally really liked that quote, it made me think a lot about my own life. I also liked the cheeky fact that all the men were in love with her, I feel like it gave her a lot of agency to say no.

Question: Do you think the women in this story act on their agency? Do they use it for gain or fear it?

RMST Blog Avery

Tag Archives: Death

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