Another rich kid’s boring selfish wasted life

#theshroudedwoman1948Maria-LuisaBombal

I was excited to read this novel’s first edition, almost 80 years old, beautiful old twirly script, old navy blue cover, just lying there as an old shrouded woman in a casket.

The writing was boring, with no hints of the beautiful prose in our class’s last two novels. The narrator is dull. When Ricardo enters her life, lifting her by the waist, she feels the pressure of his strong arm around her, “an unexpected sense of well-being took possession of me” – a rare memorable bit of prose. But then starts the duality of her feelings, saying “I was yours” followed by “I never shared your passion”. Now that she is dead, she understands that men need to do something great, to suffer greatly, and to destroy greatness. Contrast her intellectual take on this knowledge with Mad Toy’s Silvio excitedly living out these 3 aspects of real life. She goes on about the same thing for much of the book. She even takes the revolver, puts it against her temple, but instead fires at a tree. Contrasted to Mad Toy’s Silvio, who puts the revolver against his heart, pulls the trigger, and faces the life-changing consequences of his actions.

She has the ultimate religious experience, “a soft glowing warmth” walking on the path to his old hacienda, says that you must die in order to understand certain things, but doesn’t explore this connection to her basic Christian beliefs. She has a bedtime routine similar to Proust’s Combray, playing along with her father so that he can “give himself up to the suffering” in solitude, as destiny has assigned him, similar to Mad Toy’s Silvio giving himself up to destiny and suffering. The narrator presents often the female inability to fathom that their insights to men are true, instead pridefully focusing on potential, a better future, summed up with the best prose of the novel, “this losing of that real self we cover up with an infinity of trifles, having the appearance of vital things”.

I was also thankful for the description of Ines’ suicide, “she did not seem sad or depressed”, similar to Mad Toy’s Silvio’s attempted suicide; it is never about sadness as many people think, more about power. When you feel powerless over life, taking your life is the only power you have. The narrator exercises power through resisting the “quivering … pleasure” her husband gives to her, saying “what I had thought to be love was nothing more than the thrill of success I had achieved over him”. Where’s the drama and passion? I found this barely descriptive writing style boring, and offering only commonly known insights to life.

When you’re dead you have no feelings. She was a shrouded woman in life, as in death. She had suffered the death of the living, and now the death of the dead. Her talking to readers as a shrouded woman is her way of demonstrating living as a dead person.