The Shrouded Women, Bombal

 Week 4's reading is The Shrouded Women by María Luisa Bombal, a story told in first person by narrator Ana Maria. She switches from reflecting on and recounting her life, to the present looking at her dead body, and seeing the people from throughout her life visit her. She describes her relationships from her first love to her last, her friendships, her family, and her children. I found the short novel simple and easy to read, yet very descriptive and tragic. While there are brief happy moments, Ana Maria's consideration of the past focuses on unhappy things. It seems as though she is dwelling on the bad moments, and ultimately accepting of her death, to be rid of the struggles of life. I wouldn't say that any of the characters mentioned were ultimately happy either. Maria Griselda was unhappy with her beauty, in ways blaming it for Silvia's suicide. All of the marriages were miserable and contained infidelity. For example, Rodolfo and Anita as well as Ana Maria and Antonio. Furthermore, many of the women were quarrelling due to the men's infidelity, for example Sofia and Ana Maria, as well as Silvia and Maria Griselda. All in all I enjoyed reading from the perspective of a women, compared to past weeks reading from a man's perspective.

I think the reading kind of plays with the idea of the acceptance and embracement of mortality, death may not be a terrible thing. There is multiple instances of suicide where early in the story, Ana Maria contemplates with the idea of committing suicide. While there is a philosophical debate to suicide that is too complex to get into, this shows that Ana Maria never feared the afterlife. She had a belief in God and a trust that the idea of death is also an option. When talking to the priest, Ana Maria fantasizes about what the afterlife or heaven may look like. She believes it to be a happy place where the earth is luscious with plants and animals, and she could be with Ricardo. Everything she longed for in life, including a true love and happiness, she had faith she could find in the afterlife. In the end the shrouded women, or Ana Maria, is described as being content with her death. She has come to terms with her life and after the events and struggles of her life, including many tragic instances, where she "suffered the death of the living" (pg 259) Ana Maria is finally able to rest. 

My question for the week is: Did you enjoy reading from the female perspective over the male perspective of past weeks readings?

Comments

  1. Daniel Orizaga31 January 2024 at 02:05

    "All of the marriages were miserable and contained infidelity."The stories told in this novel, from the heartbreaking sincerity of death, certainly make us think about the fragility of human relationships. It seems to me that the novel marks a paradigm shift if we compare it with the type of stories where men are protagonists. We would have to see what appears in the women's novels that we will read later.

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  2. Domenica Loor1 February 2024 at 13:00

    Hi Samantha! I really enjoyed your blog post. I agree with how this text somehow implicitly embraces and brings a positive light to death, do the afterlife. It normalizes this death state throughout the book, that instead of being "omg death" it's a perspective we enjoy reading from, especially because of her writing style is so poetic. Regarding your question, I did enjoy a lot reading from the female perspective. As a woman, this felt like support for women, reading their stories, their experiences in that time, their coming into womanhood... It felt like by reading from a woman's perspective I was kind of joining her experience. I liked it a lot and I could definitely feel a difference from the other author's voice and depictions of gender.

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  3. alexandra1 February 2024 at 23:58

    Hi Samantha! I liked how you touched on the exploration of mortality and death. Ana Maria’s contemplation of suicide and her acceptance of death makes me wonder if her belief in God and the envisioned afterlife truly became a source of comfort and hope for her. Furthermore, to answer your question, I believe reading from a female point of view offers a different set of experiences, shedding light on the challenges, expectations, and relationships that women go through which all provide a very authentic representation of the identity of a woman compared to the past texts where they have been presented through the male gaze.

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