nd national life, both dominated by a sense of machismo and by a view of women as having their special place in society. He is destined to be a success except in his one great desire to marry Rosa, for she dies before this can come to pass. Her death is foretold by her younger sister, Clara, a young woman with the supernatural ability to speak to spirits and to see what is to come. This character is in essence a superior creature, able to do what others cannot, and thus she stands somewhat outside the norm of her society, able to see through some of the artifices of that society, but not able to escape them completely because she lives in this world as well. Her one attempt to escape results in 20 years of silence.
Clara and Esteban come together with a great passion that is perhaps all the greater because of their differences. She is the seer and looks to the future and to progress, including progress for women, while Esteban is a conservative who looks to the past and who is interested only in preserving that past and the privileges that came with it. Their daughter is Bianca, a young woman who lives out the rebelliousness that is inherent in Clara's communion with the spirits and in her sense of foresight and looking to the future. The father becomes a strong force in the right-wing government, while the daughter falls in love with a revolutionary, a figure of the left, and a symbol of her own rebellious spirit and need for self-expression. Allende here combines the personal life and fortunes of the Trueba family with criticism of the political struggles of this century in Chile.
In the novel, the three women in the family are set against the patriarchal male. Clara and Bianca are joined by Esteban's spinster sister Ferula in holding Esteban in contempt for his autocratic nature and his dedication to the rigidity of the class structure. Clara is the epitome of the woman for whom life is process, and her ability to spe...