Week Four: Maria Luisa Bombal, The Shrouded Woman
This book was a quick read. Overall, it was concise and captivating. A few of the most prominent themes that stood out from this text are as follows: love, the value of women in terms of love, and the expectations that are placed on people based on the gender roles of society.
Almost every single description or mention of any women in this text was somehow related to their physical appearance. It heavily focused on the idea that the value of a woman rests primarily on how beautiful they are according to the standards of society and in particular, the standards of the men in society. The men weighed their potential partners as candidates for becoming their wives and the mothers of their children based first and foremost on their attractiveness. There were a ton of details centered around skin, the colour and shape of their eyes, their hair, their grace and their bodies. I came away from this text with the feeling that while I didn't learn enough about the profound, substantial characteristics of the women in the story, I came away with very clear, detailed images of how they look on the outside.
However, there was one character, Fernando, who stood out as I believe the only man (from what I can recall) who saw more than Ana Maria's appearance - he described her merits to be her intelligence, her sensitivity and her intuition. Even her husband Antonio, although he says that Ana Maria is the only woman he had ever truly loved, justifies his being crazy for many other women with the exclamation "Really, there are too many beautiful women running around in the world!" There was simply so much focus, importance and value pinned on beauty.
Here is my final thought. All of this talk of love, heartbreak, relationships, betrayal - there has to be more to life than that, right? I think there has to be other things, hobbies and interests and more fascinating things to think about than the pain and complicated pleasures of navigating love. There wasn't a single easy going relationship in this entire text and as realistic as that is, in my opinion, it shouldn't be the main thing around which we force our thoughts and feelings to constantly revolve around. Aren't there other ways for us to find value in ourselves other than the one that our relationship gives us?
Here is my question for everyone. Do you believe that in today's society, there is just as much emphasis placed on the value of beauty? Are men and women today put through different standards than they were at the time this book was written?
Hi Lisa! This book was a quick read for me too, I think it's because I enjoyed it so much and found it to be something I would actually read even if not required for a class. In regards to your final thought, I thought very similar things. I would have liked to see Ana-Maria reflect on herself while on her death bed. Had she had no self-discovering experiences separate from the men in her life? What about love for herself? Surely our lives our defined by our own experiences and not only defined by those who make temporary or even permanent appearances in our life. Although, I think the author could be making statements about a women's self worth being dependent on marriage and other 'womanly duties' commonly expected at the time this novel was written.
ReplyDelete-Mackenzie Dewar-Pratt
"Almost every single description or mention of any women in this text was somehow related to their physical appearance."
ReplyDeleteThis is true, but I think that there are other differences between the women characters, too, although they may be less immediately obvious. For me, for instance, Maria Griselda stands out as a figure who is perceived as disruptive, even threatening. Why is that?
That was me, Jon. (For some reason my name didn't appear, as sometimes happens on blogspot.)
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