Monthly Archives: January 2022

Maria Luisa Bombal, “The Shrouded Woman”

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The Shrouded Woman was a wonderful read. The unorthodox use of perspective, at times adopting the first-person viewpoint of the dead Ana Maria, and at other times taking a third-person viewpoint, makes for an interesting retrospective on the life of the character. By seeing it through Ana Maria’s eyes, we get to experience her life, her suffering, her mistakes and her regrets. Indeed, the story itself was quite saddening as nobody is really happy in this story. Everybody faces misfortune, misunderstandings, hardship, heartbreak, and/or jealousy. And yet, the story ends with catharsis as Ana Maria seems to come to terms with the end of her life; the finality of it is a break from the suffering of living. She is ready for the final end, the “second death”, the “death of the dead”.

I find it interesting how the characters of this story are portrayed. As mentioned before, nobody is ever truly happy. The women are often portrayed as vain, or jealous. The men as cowardly, foolish, or selfish. People envy each other throughout the story: everyone envies or desires Maria Griselda for her impossible beauty; Sofia envies Ana Maria for the happiness of her childhood; Antonio envies Ricardo for possessing the heart of Ana Maria even though she has married Antonio. It is as if living only brings suffering and lost opportunities. Love does not persevere, except only in death.

Death is central to this story. After all, the narrator herself is dead. It seems that only in death can Ana Maria tie up the loose ends in her life. She finally understands the true love between her and Ricardo (“Must we die in order to know?”, 176). In death, she comes to Sofia in a dream, and forgives her (“… that an almost forgotten friend has come to her in death to tell her she was forgiven”, 248).  In death, she finally sees her daughter’s full expression of love (“You see, you see how death can also be an act of life.”, 249). And her final goodbye is to the priest, in whose faith (not just in God, but in her) she finds solace in her final transition. As a side note, it is interesting that Silvia takes her own life in the same way that Ana Maria attempted to, and both out of heartbreak. Yet Silvia is the one with the “courage” to follow through, while Ana Maria couldn’t bring herself to do it. Is it courageous to escape, and would Ana Maria have spared herself a lifetime of suffering?

Overall, it was an interesting perspective on life and death. If we could, upon passing, reflect on the entirety of our lives before we finally move on, how would we come to terms with everything we have done? Is death the only liberation from the burdens of life?

There was also something more about the role of women in this. Women are portrayed so vain and jealous, and the strong women like Elena and Anita have their strength seemingly as negative traits. I don’t know what to make of it though. Perhaps it speaks of the role of women of the time?

My question for this blog post is, what is the significance of having the narrator already be dead, rather than, say, dying? Why does the perspective sometimes shift between first and third person?

 

Some noteworthy quotes I wrote down:

  • “That is the price that women like Elena must pay for their liberty” (182);
  • “Must we die in order to know?” (176)
  • “God, I’m beginning to think that to be so beautiful is a misfortune, like any other” (193);
  • “She had let him into the intimacies of her life and she was not strong enough to cast him out” (206)
  • “Why, oh, why, must a woman’s nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life?” (226)
  • “You see, you see how death can also be an act of life.” (249)
  • “Oh Lord, the waters have not yet closed over her head and things are already changing; life is pursuing its course in spite of her, without her.” (250)

Marcel Proust, “Combray”

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On Part I

Having read the introduction by Davis, I mentally prepared myself to be thoroughly confused and worked up my capacity for patience. To my surprise, for how long Proust’s sentences and descriptions are, they flow extremely well and are very lovely to read. That being said, I am impressed by how much can be said about so little actually happening within the story. Sometimes it feels like my own thought process bouncing between analogy and all kinds of ideas and tangents. Below I will list some of my impressions after reading through the passage.

A central theme of this part seems to be the narrator’s relationship with his memories at Combray. In our dreams, we sometimes explore the places and times we have been in, but without complete clarity. It is once the narrator is pulled into the waking world that he recalls his experiences. His relationship with his family is an interesting one. There is an almost Oedipal obsession with his mother, and a cold sternness from his father, and yet, this seems to flip by the end of the chapter, for it is his mother who shows the sternness and his father who grants him the comfort he seeks (sort of; it is clear that his father does not express his love (?) outwardly). He is portrayed with a nervous disposition and desires the fleeting comfort of his mother at night, which is often denied because of his nervousness. However, perhaps paradoxically, his anxiety seems to give him the courage to be “rebellious” and seek the comfort he is kept from. This seems to bring truer expressions of love between him and his parents. Love thus appears to be another recurring theme in the story. And of course, there is the scene with the tea and madeleine. This scene was wonderfully poetic and lyrical, but also very confusing. The madeleine evokes something within the narrator. I believe this is the peculiarity of memory. In dreams we see fragments, and in our awoken minds we recall, but sometimes it takes something as simple as the taste of a madeleine to make us relive. It’s like a gateway into lost time, or perhaps an anchor? Back in high school, I studied literature for a bit, and this reminds me of the poetry of an author, Boey Kim Cheng, who often wrote about the power of food to bind us to memory and love and family, allowing us to rediscover memories from the past.

Those are just some of my musings and I haven’t really thought too hard about their applicability. So, what about Swann? I do not fully understand the class politics in play with regard to Swann, or why some of the family members treat him with such disdain. I also do not really understand his place in the story yet. I understand him to be a man with friends in high places and he maintains his relationship with the narrator’s family through a connection to the grandfather, but not much more than that. Perhaps more will become clear once I proceed to Part II. Will update this post when/if I get there!

Oh yes, and a question to pose: What is the value of remembering the past? Is it better to remember, or to forget?

EDIT: Some other thoughts that occurred as I read other posts.

  1. It is beautiful the way the chapter ends as the memory of Combray is rebuilt “from (his) cup of tea”. It’s like it is immortalised.
  2. The narrator describes how there is something more enduring and more immaterial even as people die and things are destroyed by time. He says smell and taste remain for a long time, but perhaps it is not smell and taste per se. After all, the feeling evoked within him was not the tea or the madeleine, but something deeper within. Those memories deep inside will always withstand the test of time. (but maybe I’m misreading this!)

Howdy!

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A quick introduction about me! My name is Andrew How (yes, How), and I’m a 3rd-year exchange student from sunny Singapore! I’m doing a degree in social sciences at the Singapore Management University and will be studying at UBC for the winter term. Having decided that coming here was an opportunity for exploration, I opted to take up this course to engage in some intellectual exploration and am excited to learn something new and different that I probably wouldn’t be able to back home. Hoping to make some new friends and gain some valuable knowledge and understanding from this course!

A Reflection on the Lecture

Romance studies appears to me to be a broad, atypical and unique discipline, as much trying to find differences as well as similarities between texts that are likely to be different yet share a common linguistic origin. Language itself is an interesting concept. Language is such a central and integral part of our society and culture; simply a collection of symbols that can carry so much meaning beyond its surface, meanings which can be so different yet so similar between languages. Translation, therefore, is perhaps the most intriguing part of the course for me. By taking these texts into translation, how much does it give us insight into the meaning and the message behind the words? How much can we learn of the time and place within and without the text, and how much is lost in translation? Is it ever possible to fully grasp the meaning of a text when it is translated, and how important is it to stay faithful to the original meaning? Is recontextualisation doomed to never be fully authentic, or is it the creation of something new and valuable in itself?

Aside from these questions, I also wish to ask: Why study romance studies? Exploration and intellectual challenge are always wonderful, but I wonder how else it applies to our understanding of the world. How does understanding and recontextualising the works of the “romance world” colour our worldview? That is what I hope to uncover as I progress through the course.

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