IB English Paper One

International Baccalaureate World Literature

IB English Paper One

Eng Per 6

Due June 13, 2007

Mat Laffitte

Magical Realism and Characterization and its affect on women’s portrayal in Chronicle of a Death Foretold and The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits and Gabriel Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold both are Latin American novels that illustrate and deal with various aspects of their cultures. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a novel about a small town where a baffling murder takes place twenty-seven years earlier. The House of the Spirits is a novel based in Chile that illustrates the political, social, and economic struggles the characters undergo. Both Latin American novelists share similar writing styles, greatly influenced by their backgrounds. Allende’s feminist views and Marquez’s childhood, having grown up solely among women, is reflected in both texts. One evident theme, which parallels the authors’ backgrounds, is the way in which women are portrayed bearing great mental, physical, and extrasensory traits. Each author, through characterization and magical realism, uses at least one female character to demonstrate how women possess the strength to get by despite the cultural restrictions in which they are belittled by the dominance of males in their culture.

In both novels, the authors use magical realism to exhibit women’s clairvoyant power. In Marquez’s novel, the main character’s (Santiago Nasar) mother Placida Linero, is first introduced as “[having] a well-earned reputation as an accurate interpreter of other people’s dreams”(Marquez, pg 4). Placida obtained many supernatural signs or omens that point to Santiago’s death. Similarly, in Allende’s novel, one of the main characters, Clara, can “interpret dreams”(Allende, pg 75), as well as “predict the future and recognize people’s intentions”(Allende, pg 76). Throughout the novel, other female characters such as Alba, Clara’s granddaughter, possess similar traits to her own. This use of magical realism demonstrates how the authors hint towards an existence beyond the physical world; a world clearly only reachable by the female characters. By having the women in both novels be the ones who reach this supernatural state, the authors illustrate their views regarding women: despite the stereotype of women’s physical inferiority to men, they can be superior mentally and spiritually.

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Another similar exploration is how in both novels, a female character is forced to marry against her heart or will. . In Marquez’s work, Angela Vicario’s family forces her to marry an outsider named Bayardo San Roman. “Angela never forgot the horror of the night on which her parents and her older sisters with their husbands, gathered together in the parlor, imposed on her the obligation to marry a man whom she had barely seen”(Marquez, pg 34). This suggests how Angela’s social status and the fact that she is a woman causes certain restrictions to be made upon her, such as an arranged marriage she does not consent to. Comparatively, in Allende’s work Esteban Trueba and Clara bound their first born daughter to an arranged marriage to Jean de Satigny. “’I’m not getting married, Papa,’ she said. ‘Be quite!’ he roared. ‘You’re getting married. I don’t want any bastards in the family, do you hear me?’…’you might as well forget about [Pedro Tercero Garcia] and try to be a good wife to the man who’s going to lead you to the altar.’” (Allende, pg 215). This aspect simply stresses the author’s intentions to obtain consent or appreciation regarding the female figure, and demonstrates what they faced in their culture during that time period. Marriage against the women’s will illustrates how overpowered the women are by the men in either society. However, for them to go through with the marriage in both cases shows the mental strength the women carry that allows them to endure a hardship where their feelings do not dictate their fate. On the other hand, the authors portray the men in both novels as being persistent to what they want, such as their wives, and ultimately abuse what they have. As women’s ability to compromise and still find other means of happiness becomes more and more apparent, their mental superiority is again shown. This effective use of characterization achieves an undoubtful respect for women, something that each author clearly has a high regard for.

One aspect that differentiates the texts from one another is the women’s submissiveness to household or marital necessities, which parallels each author’s past experiences growing up. As Gabriel Marquez was raised by his grandmother and several aunts, he was immediately taught the sacrifices which women are expected endure through marriage. This is apparent in his work when the narrator states how “The girls had been reared to get married. They knew how to do screen embroidery, sew by machine, weave bone lace, wash and iron, make artificial flowers and fancy candy, and write engagement announcements” (Marquez, pg 31). Furthermore, the narrator’s mother states how “any man will be happy with [her girls] because they’ve been raised to suffer” (Marquez, pg 31). Marquez sees and characterizes women in a more educated mannar that what’s needed for marriage to evoke a high regard for women. In this novel, women are taught at a young age the sacrifices they will encounter throughout marriage. By being “reared” for this, women prove they possess a physical strength that the men do not. On the other hand, Isabell Allende obtained and developed her feminist views as she matured. This can evidently be seen in her novel as Clara is “not particularly well suited to the duties of marriage and domestic life” (Allende, pg 88). Allende’s contradictory portrayal of women’s domesticity ultimately makes a similar statement as Marquez. Although Clara is primarily portrayed as lacking in domestic skills, subtleties in the text imply that she in fact doesn’t, and can successfully address these issues at times when necessary. This characteristic corresponds to Marquez’s point, yet Allende achieves differently. In her novel, the female characters seem to grasp the bare necessity of the sacrificial domestic concept, which again illustrates a physical and mental ability that women possess which the male figures in the novels do not.

Both Chronicle of a Death Foretold and The House of the Spirits share a analogous resemblance in the portrayal of women pertains to Isabel Allende and Gabriel Marquez’s similar lives. In the novels, the male figures seem to cease women’s ability to evidently succeed in their society. However, the author’s use of magical realism and characterization demonstrate how the women actually possess physical and mental traits that male characters do not. By doing so, the authors each convey a high level of respect for women that the male characters in the novel cannot and do not achieve.