"The Shrouded Woman" - Bombal
In “The Shrouded Woman” by María Luisa Bombal, Ana Maria looks back on the people in her life after her death. I found this book slower and more difficult to get through compared to “Mad Toy” but I enjoyed Bombal’s poetic style of writing.
The recurring theme of flowers around Ana Maria was interesting to me. In the beginning, her sheets are perfumed with lavender. In the end, flowers are placed into Ana Maria’s coffin, and she encounters flowers of bone as she falls through the ground. Flowers are beautiful but have a short finite lifespan. The flowers symbolize how fleeting youth is; Ana Maria had spent much of her youth heartbroken over her first love, Ricardo. As well, in the end she feels herself sink into the earth with “an infinity of roots” (259), much like a flower being planted into the ground. Ana Maria described her life with such sadness but I felt happy that she found peace in becoming one with nature after death. While her life as a human was a lonely one, being apart from Sofia and Ricardo, she is able to find peace in resting alone because she is connected with nature.
Nature in general makes frequent appearances in this book, often in reference to beauty. Sofia’s complexion is a “delicate rose colour that can be seen only in roses” (234), while Maria Griselda’s eyes are described as a green “like the moss that sticks to the tree trunks dampened by winter” (202). The many mentions of beauty stood out to me in this book. Many of the men are violent and controlling while women are to be submissive and beautiful like roses or moss, reflecting the societal expectation of women at the time. As Ana Maria narrates the book and spends quite a while describing how beautiful the women are, especially Maria Griselda, it is evident how the importance of beauty is ingrained in her. She projects the ideal of beauty on men too; I found it a little bit funny how dramatically Ana Maria reacts to spotting a very small wrinkle on Antonio’s face. While beauty standards obviously played a part, I can’t help but wonder if Ana Maria was also just self-conscious and hyperaware about looks.
My question to the class is: what do you think is the significance of religion in the book, particularly in terms of how the afterlife is depicted?
Arissa, you have done a very refined reading of the novel, thank you for noticing those details that are very valuable to understand what Bombal wanted to do with “The Shrouded Woman”. It's been mentioned little in this week's blogs, but nature (and the "earthiness" of the story) is a very important element. Again, thank you for highlighting the topics you propose for discussion.
ReplyDeleteHi Arissa, I did not read Mad Toy so I found it interesting that you found this more difficult to get through, as to me, it has been the easiest to read so far. To your question, I think religion was significant to how the afterlife is depicted, because it was Ana Maria who was telling the story of the afterlife. We saw it through her eyes, so her faith was depicted.
ReplyDeleteHey,
ReplyDeleteI read mad toy and I found this book easier to get through. I think personally because it was written in a woman's perspective that made me more interested for sure.
Hey Arissa, and in addition to the description of the personality of women, it also speaks of women's physical and psychological aspirations, which is a major breakthrough in Latin American literature.
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