'The house of the spirits' : How are the concerns of the novel embodied in the character of Esteban Trueba in Chaps. 1-3?

Essay on ‘The House of the Spirits’

How are the concerns of the novel embodied in the character of Esteban Trueba in Chaps. 1-3 (Inclusive)?

As the saying goes ‘God sees everything even the black hole on the black rock in the blackness of night.’ The novel ‘House of the spirits’ by Isabel Allende is about a person called Esteban Trueba, who spent his whole life conducting sins, a person who did things only for himself and a person who at the end was somewhat punished by God. Isabel Allende, a Latin American writer wrote this novel. However in the story Alba provides the overall viewpoint of the novel.

Although the writer describes many characters in the story, she mainly focuses on Esteban Trueba’s life. He is somewhat linked to every character in the story and so the role of each and every character does affect him.

The introductory part of the novel gives us the idea of recording things and reclaiming the past. It touches every corner of the story, such as Clara’s muteness, the idea of time moving with four generations, Clara’s habit of writing everything in her book and how that book helps Alba to overcome challenges in her life.

The story begins with Del Valle’s family, Severo and Vivea as the parents of fifteen children, of whom eleven are alive. Rosa, the eldest of all the children in the family is described as a creature of myth, having green hair and yellow eyes, like a mermaid and who at birth was like a porcelain doll, without wrinkle, white and smooth.

Esteban Trueba, who was deeply in love with Rosa the beautiful, leaves his family and house to work in a mine. For years he struggles there to earn money, to make himself as rich as Del Valle’s family and in order to marry Rosa. As he was on his way to make money, suddenly one day he comes to know about Rosa’s death, the death that he never thought of and the death that gave a big turn to his entire life. He then stops working there in the mine and at once moves to the country to see Rosa. As soon as he reaches there, he meets the little girl called Clara, who has stopped talking since the day her sister, Rosa died. The idea of Clara’s muteness then starts and comes twice in the story. Once when she was a child and again when she was living a married life with Esteban Trueba. Although Rosa dies Esteban does not goes back to his family and moreover he further moves to another place called Tres Marias. This obviously shows how self-centred he is that he does not stay with his family and care about his ill mother.

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During his stay in Tres Marias, he is not a good patron though. He treats the Indians like animals and what is more he rape Pancha Garcia, an Indian girl who is far too younger than him. While he is in Tres Marias, his mother die and Ferula starts staying with him. He then marries Clara and has three children, Blanca, Jaime and Nicholas. Jaime and Nicholas though being twin brothers are totally different from each other. Jaime is described as a very calm and kind character like his mother Clara whereas Nicholas in some sense is very much similar to Clara’s Uncle Marcos. For example Nicholas have always travelled around different places like Uncle Marcos used to do when he was alive. The only thing in common about the two boys is they both love Amanda. The eldest child of Esteban and Clara is Blanca, who is so much different from her father, who is not as beautiful as Esteban expected her to be at birth. This make Esteban dislike her and later on when he comes to know about her relation with Pedro Tercero he starts disliking her even more. She too is never happy with her father because he does not accept her love till the end and insists on her marrying Jean de Satigny, a person whom she never has loved.

In the meantime, Esteban finds Ferula getting closer to Clara, he then out of jelousy could not stands it and at once speaks to Ferula to leave his house. She then curses him for what he did to her and later on when he become older and older, he suffers a lot, he is now alone in his big house, Clara, Blanca, Jaime, Nicholas and even Pedro Segundo leaves him. Clara does not talk with him when they join again as a family. As the time passes, Blanca gives birth to a girl named Alba and Esteban as grandfather makes love to Alba. However, one very evening when it was Alba’s birthday her grandmother, Clara passes away. Esteban then feels more loneliness than ever he had felt in his life, the only person he now have is his granddaughter Alba because Blanca at that time was always busy meeting Pedro Tercero. But as soon as Alba grow bigger and bigger she with Miguel, the person she loves starts participating in the protest for which she is kidnapped and is also raped by Esteban Garcia. Esteban Garcia is the grand son of Pancha Garcia, an India girl, who was also raped by Esteban Trueba during his stay in Tres Marias. So it is likely to be correct to say that Esteban Garcia takes the revenge for what Esteban Trueba did to his grandmother, but Alba decides not to take the revenge again because for her this is what she deserves being Esteban’s granddaughter and this is what she is destined to be. Thus the story ends with the idea given in the beginning of the story that Clara’s habit of writing everything even the unimportant things such as Esteban Trueba raping Pancha Garcia did help Alba to accept her fate and also to over come the challenges she faced in her life.

Although Isabel Allende, as a female writer wrote the story relating the three main female characters, Clara, Blanca and Alba with a male character Esteban Trueba, she also creates a repeating male voice of Esteban Trueba in the story. This first person narration in the male voice of Esteban Trueba does helps him to defend himself and to win the sympathy of the readers by telling the hardships he went through to develop Tres Marias as a patron and how much does he loves Clara.

It is obvious that the male voice in the story plays important role because even if there is no male voice in the story for a while as when it is third person narration, the writer does mentions something about somebody, which somehow gets related with Esteban Trueba. The writer can be called as successful writer for the way she has created the male voice as one typical of the nature of male human. Esteban Trueba as male voice also keeps on defending himself and he keeps on insisting himself as a good patron but he does not mentions about how rude was with his people in Tres Marias, how many times he raped Pancha Garcia, how mean he was for treating his sister Ferula so badly and how bad he was with his own daughter.

The use of the male voice in the story makes the novel an interesting piece of work; this is because of the difference in ideas of the first person narration to the third person narration. For example the third person in the story describes Esteban as very cruel character whereas Esteban himself as the male voice tells us that he is a person with some good characteristics.

The whole story moves along with the three families, Del Valle’s family, Esteban’s family and Pedro Segundo’s family. Moreover the relation between Esteban and Del Valle’s family seems stronger than the Pedro Segundo’s family. This may be because that the only two persons Esteban has ever loved in his life are Rosa and Clara, who are the daughters of Del Valle’s family. The relation between Esteban Trueba and Pedro Segundo’s family seems ruining by the end of the story for which the only person responsible is Esteban Trueba himself because he was the one who raped Pancha Garcia and just because he raped Pancha Garcia Esteban Garcia, Pancha’s grandson rapes Alba.

Esteban Trueba in the story is also describes as a sensual man, who in the beginning was deeply in love with Rosa and later on desperately in need of Clara’s love. The idea of Esteban’s sensuality comes when the whole family, even Pedro Segundo leaves him alone in his big house. This led him to apologize Clara for his mistreatment. Similarly Ferula is also mentioned as a very sensual woman like her brother, she is always in need of a real love from her brother Esteban Trueba, and from her sister in law, Clara. Ferula would do all the household work despite Clara’s presence in the house and what is more she would bath Clara and treat her like a baby child, just to make Clara to love her.

Isabel Allende relates the entire with magic realism and especially with Clara’s supernatural power. Clara who is given the gift of knowing future, each time turns the story to another direction for example her prediction of Rosa’s death led to the story otherwise Esteban would not have married Clara if Rosa have not died and thus the whole story could not have taken place.

The writer also shows the huge gap between the social classes in the story, such as Esteban Trueba being the patron can even beat his people, the Indians in Tres Marias. Also never did he accept Esteban Garcia despite being his own blood and Pancha Garcia whom he raped again and again but didn’t make her his wife. The importance of social classes comes again in the story when Esteban rejects Pedro Tercero to be Blanca’s husband; he wants his daughter to marry a person who has name, fame, and high status in the society like Jean de Satigny. For Esteban Trueba a good name was so much important that he gives Jean de Satigny a huge amount of dowry for marrying Blanca and a monthly inheritance for giving his name to Blanca’s child. These things obviously show that the high social rank is very important for the society and moreover for Esteban Trueba in the story.

Though Isabel talks about many characters in the story such as Blanca, Alba, Pedro Tercero, ferula ect. There are three main female characters that she directly links with Esteban Trueba. These three main characters, which are Rosa, Clara and Pancha are the one who begins the story, who leads the story and ends the story. Although Rosa and Pancha Garcia’s role are mentioned only in the beginning, they play very important role in the story. It is actually Rosa’s death that led the story to begin and Pancha Garcia’s role, which led the story to its completion. Regarding Clara, she is the most important person in Esteban’s life but in the story she is not actively involved, that is because of her character, as she is always in her own world.

To conclude, personally I found this novel quite interesting because for me it is likely to say that the theme is very real kind, that for me it seems we humans also come across the same kind of difficulties in our life like what Alba and the other characters in the story has faced. The theme, that tells us to tolerate things and to accept your fate like Alba, to be as kind as Clara and Jaime and not conduct sins like Esteban Trueba.

-Tenzin Deckyi

IB Ist year