The Shrouded Woman was a very interesting comparison/contrast between the unknown world of death and the certainty of reality. I found reading about Anna-Maria’s life through the eyes of her corpse as a captivating way to bring me, the reader, through the story of her memories. In previous texts we have read I found myself getting lost or confused by the complexity of the writing, and while The Shrouded Woman was no basic piece of writing, the author kept me captivated through every detail making this one of my favourite texts we have read so far.
This book was interesting to me because I feel like it touched on an idea that has always come to me whenever death is brought up. Once we are gone, who will care? What will the world have to say about me and how has my life up to the point of death affected the people around me? Although this is a chilling thought, the author told the story of Anna-Maria’s afterlife experience in a way that almost made her death beautiful, much like the beauty she talked about once having. In her death, she was able to have this realization about her life and how she affected all of the people who visited her in death.
Ana-Maria embodied the expectation I would have for any woman in the 1930s. Her role throughout her life was to be a wife and the memories she has of herself are greatly surrounding her beauty. It made me think of how the woman’s role in society has changed and also how much it has not. Expectations for women in society and perceptions of beauty have changed over time but not enough that I couldn’t not relate to Ana-Maria when it came to her comparing her whole life to how she looked and was perceived at each time of it. I was looking forward to reading a novel by a female author with hopes that they would touch on this aspect of our society as a way to compare it to our modern-day society. I liked that there was an emphasis on women in this novel and that they were each empowered through their own means.
I hope everyone else reading this book enjoys it as much as I have. A question I would ask someone reading this novel is what is the author trying to tell us about death and how can we use that in our lives today?
“the author told the story of Anna-Maria’s afterlife experience in a way that almost made her death beautiful, much like the beauty she talked about once having.”
I like this, and there’s a moment near the beginning in which Ana Maria seems to suggest that she regains some of her beauty once dead. But it also makes me think of the inverse: that beauty is deadening, an obstacle to really experiencing life fully.
“Once we are gone, who will care?” – yes, it seems we have a very universal theme in Bombal, but one that is told from a local and even peripheral, as Jon mentions in his lecture, perspective.
I wonder how specifically you view the empowerment of each female character? I would love to see some concrete examples form the text!
Hi Spencer!
I also found myself comparing this text to our modern day society. It was surprising to me how much, at least from my experience, societal views of womens roles have not changed as much as I had hoped.
Hi Spencer! I agree with what you said about this reading being less complex but still extremely enjoyable in comparison to the readings we have done in the past. I like how you pointed out how in some ways societies views of women has changed, but in many ways it remains the same. I found the women in this story to be strong and I really enjoyed reading about their journeys with love.