The strength of women in One Hundred Years of Solitude and The House of the Spirits

International Baccalaureate World Literature

Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende both give women strong leadership roles in their novels, as in One Hundred Years of Solitude and The House of the Spirits women play a significant role in family affairs. Men often start off strong, but often lose sight of what’s important or no longer use their skills to be the successful leader they are able to be. When this happens, it is the women who step in to keep the family strong and the day to day activities going. Without these women, the families in both One Hundred Years of Solitude and The House of the Spirits would perhaps fall to pieces.

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, the matriarch of the Buendia family is Ursula Iguaran. Right from chapter one, readers are able to see her sense of level headedness. When Jose Arcadio Buendia first got caught up in the idea of science and alchemy, as shown to him by Melquiades, and wanted to trade their farm animals for magnetized ingots, her sense of reality tired to convince him not to do so. It says, “[Jose Arcadio Buendia] traded his mule and a pair of goats for the two magnetized ingots. Ursula Iguaran, his wife, who relied on those animals for their poor domestic holdings, was unable to dissuade him” (Marquez 2). This may seem like an insignificant moment, but it’s not. It is this moment that foreshadows the fact that that Ursula is going to be the sensible one in the family, the one whose practicality will keep the family going, even when Jose Arcadio Buendia’s curiosity might get the best of him. This would turn out to be okay, though, because “Ursula’s capacity for work was the same as that of her husband” (Marquez 8).

In The House of the Spirits, readers also see a strong sense of women’s leadership right from the beginning of the novel embodied by Nivea del Valle, the matriarch of the del Valle family. It says:

[Nivea del Valle] shared her husband’s parliamentary ambitions, hoping that if he won a seat in Congress she would finally secure the vote for women, for which she had fought for the past ten years, permitting none of her numerous pregnancies to get in her way. (Allende 3)

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Not only is Nivea del Valle fulfilling her duties of bringing children into the family, a strong held belief at that time, but she is also was able to aspire to have rights and duties outside of the family for herself, and for other women. This shows just how strong of a woman she is, not only physically, but psychology and emotionally as well, as for her to have “… given birth to fifteen children, eleven of whom were still alive …” (Allende 3), she must have psychological strength and strong will in order to survive all of that, raise a family, and still be able to even think about fighting for women’s rights. Because of this, Nivea’s capacity for work, like that of Ursula’s, can also be said to be the same as that of her husband.

Matriarchs in both novels also exhibit the characteristic of an overseer, and this characteristic carries on throughout the novels, even when these matriarchs are not technically able to see anymore. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ursula continues in her matriarchal duties, even when she realizes she is blind, yet “no one discovered she was blind” (Marquez 246). She did not let her disability stop her, however. “She concentrated on a silent schooling in the distances of things and people’s voices, so that she would still be able to see in her memory what the shadows of her cataracts no longer allowed her to” (Marquez 246). She also used “the unforeseen help of odors” (Marquez 246) to help her live her everyday life. The fact that she was blind for such a large portion of her life, and yet it did not affect her role as the matriarch of the family, shows immense amounts of mental strength. Her disability, in some respects, is what allowed her to harness that mental strength and put it to good use, for when Fernanda’s wedding ring was lost, Ursula was the only one who was able to find. This is due to the fact that “while the others were going carelessly all about, she watched them with her four senses … and after some time she discovered that every member of the family … repeated the same path every day” (Marquez 247). So, when Fernanda’s ring was missing:

“Ursula remembered that the only thing different that she had done that day was to put the mattresses out in the sun... Since the children had been present … Ursula figured that Fernanda had put the ring in the only place where [the children] could not reach it: the shelf. (Marquez 247)

Thus, Ursula’s blindness can be thanked for her strong mental state of mind, even as she was growing older, for her extensive mental training would not have had to take place if she wasn’t indeed blind.

Nivea del Valle also serves as a role of an overseer. After her death, Nivea’s head is nowhere to be found, and therefore, her body is buried without it. When her head is found, it is placed in Clara and Esteban’s bedroom. Thus, even in death, Nivea was still able to watch over the family, and the birth of Jaime and Nicolas. Just as Ursula still served as an overseer, though she was unable to see, the same is true Nivea. Though she has died, she still watches over the happenings of her family. This reinforces the fact she was indeed a strong matriarchal figure in the novel.

As One Hundred Years of Solitude goes on, the role of Ursula Iguaran begins to become more apparent to the reader. It becomes clear that it is her strength, metal and physical, is going to be what keeps the family, and Macondo, together, not that of Jose Arcadio Buendia. This is evident when Jose Arcadio Buendia tries to set fire to the house after communicating with spirits, such as those of Melquiades and Prudencio Aguilar, and is forced to be tied to a tree. After seeing this, “[Ursula and Amaranta] built him a shelter of palm branches to protect him from the sun and the rain” (Marquez 78). This situation can be symbolic of Jose Arcadio Buendia essentially dying, as he will no longer be able to contribute anything to the family or to Macondo, and the shelter that was built for him can be a representation of his grave. Most women in this situation might break down, and their soul or spirit might somewhat figuratively die with their husband. Because this was not so in Ursula’s case, it shows yet again her strength as a woman, and as the matriarch of her family and of Macondo. This shows that Ursula’s dedication is to her family, and that is going to remain strong for them, as well as that she is indeed strong enough to go on without a man by her side supporting her.

Readers see this same strength and family loyalty again in The House of the Spirits, only this time it is not in Nivea del Valle, but rather in Alba. She says, “I want to think that my task is life and that my mission is not to prolong hatred … while I carry this child in my womb, the daughter of so many rapes, or perhaps of Miguel, but above all, my own daughter” (Allende 432). This quote exemplifies that sense of family loyalty and personal strength that readers see clearly in Ursula Iguaran. In a similar situation, another woman may have chosen to not go through with her pregnancy out of fear that her baby would be the result of one of many rapings, and that having that child would remind her of “being curled up in darkness” (Allende 405), of men “[stripping] her violently, pulling off her slacks” (Allende 409), and of “the atrocious pain that coursed through her body” (Allende 409), all of which Alba went through while she was in captivity being tortured, beaten, and raped. Alba’s sense of family loyalty overshadowed all of that potential fear, however, not only did she go through with the pregnancy, she did so with a positive attitude, and the outlook that a prolonged cycle of violence would finally end with her baby. Though her situation is not exactly the same, because she has Miguel to go on by her side, it is quite possible that even if Alba did not have Miguel by her side, she still would have went through with the pregnancy, because the quote above makes it clear that her loyalty is to her baby, no matter what the situation.

Both One Hundred Years of Solitude and The House of the Spirits contain women that exhibit a tremendous amount of personal strength. These women use their strength, physical, mental, and emotional, mostly to do their best to support their families. When the men in these novels are unable to live up to their expectations, the women are always right there, ready to take the lead. This was an almost unheard of concept during the time of the novels, but Marquez and Allende use this then thought to be radical concept, to show that women are much more than bearers of children. Both of these novels show just how much strength it takes for women to be fully able to run their households and their families.