Right from her childhood, Clara ‘lived in a universe of her own invention, protected from life’s inclement weather, where the prosaic truth of material objects mingled with the tumultuous reality of dreams and the laws of physics and logic did not always apply.’ [2] This is indeed true, as Clara Trueba is not just any other character or person, she is way above the reality that exists in this universe, she is indeed supernatural. The simple truth is that she is not like other human beings around her. She just could not belong to anyone, not to her parents, not to her children and certainly not to her husband. It seems as though she consciously tried to maintain this sense of detachment from everyone around her, perhaps because of her inability to face any vulnerabilities or conflicts that relationships inevitable entail. Moreover, this also gave her a chance to attain an ever higher level of spirituality. She was a special person and most certainly she preferred philosophical and spiritual feelings to the more ordinary and uncontrollable emotions of interpersonal attachments. However, although she never had an intimate relationship with anyone, she could connect with every member of the family at an emotional level and formed a unique bond with each one. She was in fact able to achieve mature attachment, which is difficult for any other normal human being. Thus, although she personally loved everyone in her family, the sense of detachment that she had also allowed her to accept the reality of life.
Clara also remains far away from the lives of her children, Blanca, Jaime and Nicolas, as she doesn’t even get to know when they’re all grown up. However, in spite of this, she is the first one to know about Blanca’s imminent divorce with Jean de Satigny. She also senses her parents’ as well as her sister in law, Ferula’s deaths and is constantly predicting the future of the Trueba family. Due to Clara’s clairvoyance fates change repeatedly in the novel. However, although Clara realizes that she can only predict but not change the future, fate is not entirely arbitrary. Rather, each character's fate is the result of all of their actions, of their ambitions. The one major influence that Clara’s sense of detachment has in this novel is inevitably on her husband, Esteban Trueba. However much he tried to be close to his wife and form a stable relationship with her, Clara just kept drifting away from him. She could never give him the pleasures that a husband would desire and ultimately he realized that she could never truly belong to him. This realization forced Esteban to begin his political career in which he found some solace. In his attempt to run away from the harsh reality of his life, he became a leader of his people and extremely ambitious as well. Ultimately, this ambition and political involvement of his shape up the rest of the novel, as relationships are severed and then re-established.
However, Clara cannot be said to be completely passive, as she often stands up against things that bother her or those that she disagrees with. Even after her death, Clara’s ghost convinces her granddaughter Alba to fight for her life, because it is indeed worth living.
Ultimately, Clara is actually able to observe all her surroundings silently, yet sharply and she knows the exact states of mind of everyone around her. This enables her to write journals in which she writes all the occurrences that happen in her life and therefore the book becomes a testimony of the events that took place in the time. It is only because of Clara’s detachment from the people that she can freely write the most important details of their lives, because she actually knows them inside out. It is because of these writings that Alba is finally able to piece together the story that makes up the novel, ‘The House of the Spirits’. Although Clara has always been away from everything that happens in the novel, in the end, we realize that she has in fact been closer than anyone all along, and this is what has shaped the main plot of the novel.
Footnotes
[1]: Allende, pg.7
[2]: Allende, pg.83
