Female Characters in "The House of the Spirits"

Isabel Allende's 1985 novel, The House of the Spirits, was described by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (23) as an ideological novel in which clairvoyance stands in for fate and in which fate is shaped not so much by the intervention of the gods, but rather by the evil that men do often unwittingly which then returns to haunt and damage their loved ones. At issue in this essay is an exploration of how Allende's novel illustrates seminal issues regarding the role of women in a specific patriarchal society, how women are empowered in the book, and what particular feminism is reflected in this mixture of fiction and history.

Isabel Allende (37) makes it quite clear that Clara, the female protagonist who communes with the spirits and is clairvoyant, sees her own fate in the death of the older sister who was to have married the man who ultimately becomes Clara's own husband. Clara, married to the autocratic Esteban, recognizes that his political views and his authoritarianism are hurtful to the members of his family who love him. Further, as described by Elizabeth Gough (100), Clara recognizes that in the choices made by her husband, the seeds

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