The House of Spirits
(1982)
by Isabel Allende

Setting: a country in South American, very
similar to Chile.
 Time: from the beginning of the 20th century to
the first half of the 70’s.
 Type of plot: social realism.
Main characters:






Esteban Trueba: a conservative landowner and
politician; owns the “Three Marías” hacienda.
Clara del Valle Trueba: Esteban Trueba’s wife; she is
able to predict the future and to communicate with spirits.
Blanca Trueba de Satigny: Esteban and Clara’s
daughter.
Pedro Tercero García: one of the workers in “Three
Marías”; felt-wing leader; Blanca’s lover and father of
her daughter.
Alba Trueba: Blanca and Pedro Tercero’s daughter.
Esteban Trueba’s only legitimate granddaughter.
Esteban García: Esteban Trueba’s illegitimate
grandson; son of Esteban García, Esteban Trueba’s first
bastard son.
Narrators:

The story is told by various narrative voices:
1. First person: Esteban Trueba and Alba.
2. Third person, omniscient narrator: Allende
uses this type of narrative voice to achieve
complexity in the form and content of the novel.
The context of the novel

On the first page, Alba says that she writes to
“reclaim the past and overcome terrors of my
own” (1). Like Alba, Isabel Allende began to write
so that she could easily bear her pain.
 The military coup and Allende’s grandfather.
 The letter  The House of Spirits
 Isabel Allende ≠ Alba. Both of them have faith in
the power of the written word to fight against
repression and to transcend time.
Women in the novel
Dedication: “To my mother, my grandmother, and
all the other extraordinary women of this story”.
 Society: an inflexible patriarchal society, based on
traditional values and suppressive power towards
women, the poor, and the marginal.
 Most women in the novel challenge such society,
which shows their strength and determination, as
well as the power of justice (Clara, Blanca, and
Alba).

Women in the novel

Nívea del Valle: mother of Clara and other 10
children. Although she is still wearing
“underskirt,” she is a suffragist.
 Tránsito Soto: by starting a cooperative of female
and male prostitutes, she becomes a union leader.
She is cunning enough to maintain her “power”
even during the dictatorship.
 Amanda: although she is physically weak due to
the drugs, she would prefer dying by torture than
betraying her brother Miguel.
Women in the novel

Other women in the concentration camp: even
the soldiers get moved by their songs.
 In a patriarchal society, based on the image of the
macho, men presuppose to have overall power of
women’s sexuality: they rape her whenever they
want; they force their wives to continuous
maternity; they decide when and who their
daughters are going to marry, and, if any of them
refuse, they beat them.
Social injustices

The sexual assaults that female characters suffer
also symbolize a broader example of social
injustice.
 Esteban/ Pancha García: she represents all
peasants and workers.
 Colonel García /Alba: she symbolizes all those
people (men and women) that lose their identity,
or even their lives, under the terror of a dictactor.
The characters in depth:

Clara symbolizes benevolence. Her magical
qualities make her to stand out.
 Her name connotes clarity, open mindedness,
and intuition.
 Her temporary escapes from this world show the
irrational nature of reality, with its corruption
and injustices.

Esteban represents a whole social class that is
loyal to the ideas of the past, with its strict
hierarchical rules and prescribed behaviors.
 His character never changes; he never regrets
his mistakes, which is the reason of his failure
and the origin of his sadness.
 As opposed to Clara, he does not respect other
people’s qualities, and he always follows
society’s norms: he ignores his bastard sons, and
the novel condemns him because of this.
 He loses his identity when he breaks the
generational link that he should have preserved .
The García family

They represent a social class and a type of life:
rural working-class and urban working-class.
Their ancestors are a mixture of indigenous South
American people and European immigrants.
 All of them have been oppressed for centuries.
 Pedro Segundo hates Esteban Trueba; he
represents the older generation of men who served
those who were socially above them, but that
never tried to change the status quo.
The García family

Pedro Tercero García symbolizes the younger
generation and sees things much differently.
 Pedro’s love relationship with Blanca means the
breaking down of social barriers, which is
Allende’s hope for her country.
 Alba incarnates the democratic perspective that
has been denied to Chile and other Latin American
countries.