A Study Guide for Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits

The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende

1982

Introduction

Until the publication of Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits, few female writers had emerged from the Boom of Latin American literature that began in the 1960s. When the translation of La casa de los espíritus appeared in 1985, however, Allende received the kind of international attention that had previously been reserved for writers such as Colombian Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez. In fact, The House of the Spirits has frequently been compared with García Márquez's masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude because of Allende's mixture of magical and realistic elements and her multi-generational plot. While there are some similarities between the two works, The House of the Spirits is distinguished by its author's unique perspective as a woman and a Chilean.

The novel follows three generations of Trueba women—Clara, Blanca, and Alba—as they struggle to establish their independence from Esteban Trueba, the domineering family patriarch. The political backdrop to this family story is the growing conflict between forces of Left and Right, culminating in a military coup that leads to a stifling dictatorship. While the country is never specifically named as Chile, its political history reflects that of the author's homeland. In 1973, military forces deposed the legally elected administration of President Salvador Allende, Isabel's uncle. I think I have divided my life [into] before that day and after that day, Allende told Publishers Weekly interviewer Amanda Smith. In that moment, I realized that everything was possible—that violence was a dimension that was always around you. Because of this realization, The House of the Spirits has a political element that is more explicit than many other works of magic realism. This makes it one of the best novels of the postwar period, and a major contribution to our understanding of societies riddled by ceaseless conflict and violent change, Bruce Allen observed in the Chicago Tribune Book World. It is a great achievement, and it cries out to be read.

Author Biography

Allende (pronounced "Ah-yen-day") was born August 2, 1942, in Lima, Peru, the daughter of Chilean diplomat Tomás Allende and his wife, Francisca Llona Barros. Her father was a first cousin of Salvador Allende, her godfather, who later became president of Chile. Allende's parents divorced when she was just two years old, and her mother took her to live with her grandparents. Allende's grandparents had a profound influence on her, and she has said they served as the models for the characters of Esteban and Clara Trueba in The House of the Spirits. Allende's mother later remarried, and her new husband was also a diplomat whose assignments took the family abroad. By the time she was fifteen, the author had lived in Bolivia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Allende became a noted journalist in Chile, authoring regular magazine columns, editing a children's magazine, and even hosting a weekly television program. At the same time, she tried her hand at producing plays and writing short stories for children. Allende married engineer Miguel Frías in 1962, and the couple had two children, Paula and Nicolás. In the meantime, her uncle Salvador Allende was elected President of Chile on his fourth attempt at the office. When his government fell to a military coup on September 13, 1973, the author's life took a dramatic change. Like her character Alba, Allende joined the efforts of church-sponsored groups in providing food and aid to the needy and families of the victims of the regime. For fifteen months, the author helped many people escape the military's persecution at the risk of her own life, witnessing events that she would later incorporate into her first novel. Because of my work as a journalist I knew exactly what was happening in my country, I lived through it, and the dead, the tortured, the widows and orphans, left an unforgettable impression on my memory, the author wrote in Discurso Literario. "The last chapters of La casa de los espíritus narrate those events. They are based on what I saw and on the direct testimonies of those who lived through the brutal experience of the repression."

Because of her family connections, Allende lost her job, and fear for their safety led her family to flee Chile for Caracas, Venezuela in 1975. Despite her considerable experience as a journalist, she found it