A FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
OF ISABEL ALLENDE'S THE INFINITE PLAN
by
ELIZABETH M. SORELLE, B.A.
A THESIS
IN
ENGLISH
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Approved
December, 1996
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Professor Wendell Aycock and Professor David
Leon Higdon for their advice and support during the writing of tliis thesis. I
would also like to thank Paula Allen, M.A. for her help in finding feminist
criticism and Lilianna Anglada, M.A. for her help in translating the Spanish
epigraph from Violeta Parra. ]Much gratitude also goes to my husband,
Jeffrey SoRelle, without whose patience and encouragement I would have
never finished the project. And thanks also to my parents, who have
believed in me all along.
n
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ii
CHAPTER
L
INTRODUCTION
1
II.
NARRATIVE PRESENCES:
THE FOUNDATION OF THE
FEMINIST TEXT
9
III. UNDERMINING THE TRADITIONAL
MALE NARRATION: THE
OMNISCIENT FEMALE
NARRATOR'S CONTROL
OF THE NOVEL
19
IV. THE NAl^RATIONS OF GREGORY
REEVES: HIS GROWTH INTO
THE FEJVIININE REALM
30
V. CONCLUSION
46
BIBLIOGRAPHY
48
in
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Isabel Allende is one of the most important female writers in modern
Latin America. In a period of roughly ten years, she has produced six major
works of literature: The House of Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, The
Stories of Eva Luna, The Infinite Plan, and Paula. Allende is a masterful
storyteller who combines the wondrous of life ~ passion, magic, and
childhood ~ with the reality of a war-torn, patriarchal South America. Her
tales involve young women and/or misfits of society who search for Truth
and Love and who meanwhile combat class conflicts and oppressive
governments. Despite her delightful storytelling, Allende struggles to
receive the critical acclaim of her male counterparts, and by-and-large, the
literary community has ignored all but two of her novels: The House of Spirits
and Eva Luna. Of her works of literature. The Infinite Plan has received the
least amount of critical attention and has indeed garnered much negative
attention from the press. Jean McNeal, a reviewer for The Times Literary
Supplement, writes:
The theme and setting she has chosen in this novel seem to have
neutralized her writerly abilities, which, while predictable to a
degree, used to produce books imbued with a certain
enchantment, and narrative drive, which this colourless novel
sorely lacks. (9 July 1993)
Ordy two scholars, Catherine Perricone and Myrian Yvonne Jehenson, have
written extensive pieces on the novel. Thus, the question begs asking: is the
novel worthy of serious attention and what, in particular, has turned readers
and scholars from it?
The Infinite Plan is different than Allende's other works: the
protagonist, Gregory Reeves, is male and the setting is not in South America
but in the United States. In addition, Allende attempts to cover broad
historical time periods in the United States: the aftermath of World War II;
the hippie movement of the 1960s and 1970s in Berkeley, California; the
Vietnam War; and the materialistic, yuppie age of the 1980s. Furthermore,
the novel is told in retrospect, so the reader does not understand its meaning
until the very end. The unusual circumstances of the novel certainly frustrate
the typical Allende readers, as they expect a certain pattern and, at the very
least, the usual setting. Despite its awkwardness, however. The Infinite Plan
deserves serious critical attention and is indeed one of Allende's most
fascinating experiments. In particular, the novel presents an extraordinary
narrative pattern, one that by itself deserves attention and thus becomes the
focus of this thesis.
Complexity in narrative structure is by no means atypical of Allende's
works of fiction. The House of Spirits has three narrators, the most important
one being Alba, who recounts her family history based on what she has
discovered in her grandmother's diary. Eva Luna, the female protagonist of
Allende's third novel, Eva Luna, narrates The Stories of Eva Luna, and her
collection of stories exists for and is dedicated to her lover, Rolf Carle. Critics
have studied the intricate narrative patterns in Allende's worlcs and praised
her for her ingenuity. The narrative structure of The Infinite Plan is equally as
complex and challenging. The story has two official narrators: Gregory
Reeves and his unnamed, female lover. Although Reeves is the protagonist,
he narrates only thirteen brief sections within the novel, sections which range
in length from three pages to ten. Thus, the female omniscient narrator is the
primary narrator. The novel is told in retrospect, so that Reeves' story slowly
unfolds. The narrator drops clues along the way, but she only reveals her
relationship to Reeves in the last paragraph of the novel. In addition to the
two formal narrators, a variety of narrative presences also inform the text, a
concept explained in detail in Chapter II.
The importance of the complex narrative structure goes beyond its
mere existence: the novel, despite its male protagonist, supports a feminist
agenda. Allende does not openly rally for political feminist causes, but her
novels all concern women's issues. Her female characters are strong,
independent women who defy the norms of their patriarchal societies. For
example, Eva Luna the female protagonist and narrator of Eva Luna,
overcomes a childhood of poverty and, by the end of the novel, succeeds in
becoming a well-known writer of popular soap operas. Irene Baltran in Of
Love and Shadows is an energetic journalist who alters the image of women as
submissive and silent beings. In addition, Allende's writing seeks to identify
its own female voice, the central struggle of the literary feminist movement of
the twentieth century. Women have long attacked male dominance in society
and in literature. Virginia Woolf wrote in A Room of One's Own that men
have excluded women from the literary process and have taken it upon
themselves to describe for women their female experiences. Woolf writes:
If women had no existence save in fiction written by men, we
would imagine her to be a person of utmost importance; very
various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely
beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some
think even greater. But this is women in fiction. (45)
As Woolf projected early in the feminist movement, in order for women to be
depicted fairly and accurately in novels, women must establish a room of
their own in a male-dominated literary tradition. Thus, recent feminist
criticism has moved from revealing patriarchal dominance and sexism in
society and literature to studying women as writers, women writing for
women and about women. Elaine Showalter in "Feminist Criticism in the
Wilderness" labels this type of study as gynocriticism. She writes
Feminist criticism has gradually shifted its center from
revisionary readings to a sustained investigation of literature by
women. The second mode of feminist criticism engendered by
this process is the study of women as writers, and its subjects are
the history, styles, themes, genres, and structures of writing by
women. (55)
Thus, critics have taken serious steps in looking at women as contributors to
the field of literature, both in their subject matter and in their style and
language.
Inherent in the study of women's literature is the study of women's
language, especially as it differs from men's. Woolf noted the difference in
her essay "Women and Fiction":
The very form of the sentence does not fit her [a female writer].
It is a sentence made by men; it is too loose, too heavy, too
pompous for a woman's u s e . . . . And this [a way of writing] a
woman must make for herself, adapting the current sentence
until she writes one that takes a natural shape of her thought.
(81)
Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray have related the difference in language to
biological differences in the sexes. The way each sex relates to language
corresponds directly to the way each relates to sexual fulfillment. Men have
command over language, dominating and controlling it. In "Sorties: Out
and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays," Cixous describes women's writing as
it relates to female orgasm:
Her rising: is not erection. But diffusion. Not the shaft. The
vessel. Let her write! And her text knows in seeking itself that
it is more than flesh and blood, dough kneading itself, rising,
uprising openly with resounding, perfumed ingredients, a
turbulent compound of flying colours, leafy spaces, and rivers
flowing to the sea we feed. (Ill)
Word choice, descriptions, paragraphs, dialogue, content and even narrative
pattern do not have to follow a structured notion of logic and organization.
Instead, women's writing is something different, something that exists in the
very nature of being female. Feminists have not agreed upon or readily
defined the female voice, and some are not ready to equate female writing
with biology. However, many female writers, including Allende, are indeed
ignoring traditional forms of writing and searching for an inner voice.
Allende attempts to write her fiction from a woman's perspective and
in so doing, creates her own female voice different from the patriarchal
norms of language. She commented on her feminist views in an interview in
1987:
Until very recently, female characters in Latin American
literature by men have been little more than anthropomorphic
vessels, frequently made to symbolize the political conditions of
the country ~ women were narrated by men.. .. Finally, we
are speaking ~ narrating ourselves to ourselves ~ with a
feminine voice that identifies with lots of women every-where.
At last we are reading the way we make love, hate, give birth,
and get involved with politics. We are no longer only whores
or virgin mothers. We are real human beings. We always
were; we just never got to tell it. (142, as qtd. in Rivero)
Her attempt to write with a feminine voice sometimes confuses an ignorant
reading audience. John Butt in The Times Literary Supplement reacted
violently to the overtly sexual passages in The Stories of Eva Luna: "Isabel
Allende's numerous erotic passages are actually quite well dome. She might
do better to write straight pornographic books without apologetic romantic
adornments" (8 Feb 1991). Despite the negative criticism, Allende holds true
to her writing as a woman. Even if she does not align herself in one camp or
another of feminism, she believes women must express themselves as women
and not as women speaking on behalf of a sexist society.
Thus, in all of her novels, Allende presents a feminist agenda: a desire
to change the way women write and read literature. Her subject matter
concerns the issues of women: rape, love, childbirth, motherhood, sexual
enjoyment, and the feminist movement all weave themselves into her novels.
She writes descriptively, romantically, and even majestically, ignoring
criticism that her stories wander or are disjointed. As I will explain, in The
Infinite Plan, she creates a narrative structure that, in the end, allows for the
victory of the female approach to understanding life.
The story of The Infinite Plan involves the troubled life of Gregory
Reeves. He spends his entire adult life trying to escape his childhood
memories of incest within his family and the brutal machismo of the barrio.
His inability to cope leads to unrequited love for women, resulting in
unwanted and unloved children, and a painful tour in Vietnam. The novel,
then, is a healing process for the adult Reeves, who is in his mid-fifties: he
tells his story to Ming O'Brien, a psychiatrist, which enables him to tell the
story to his lover (the unnamed female narrator), which enables her to reveal
the story to us, the readers. Reeves moves from understanding the world
from a male's perspective of sexism and controlling emotion to a female's
perspective of both feeling emotion and openly expressing it. Guiding him
into this realization is the female narrator and all of the feminist and female
presences within the novel.
This thesis is divided into three main chapters. Chapter II concerns
the narrative presences within the novel that inform the text and make it
feminist. Narrative presences include the characters and factors that directly
affect the narration. In The Infinite Plan, these include a female omniscient
narrator; the feminist reality of the twentieth century; the paratext; and
Reeves' confessions to his psychiatrist and narrator. Chapter III analyzes the
role of the omniscient female narrator, who is the most powerful figure in the
novel. As the lover of Reeves, she has a vested interest in his well-being, but
she is more than just a sympathetic character. She controls the text: she
fictionalizes his past based on his confessions and allows him only limited
space to voice his own story. Ultimately, she determines when he has fully
recovered and when he can confidently reveal that new-found health to the
reader. She controls the novels and guides Reeves' healing. Chapter IV
examines Reeves' narrations, which expose him as a stereotypical male who
struggles to escape the masculine realm of lust, power, and destruction. With
the assistance of his lover and his psycliiatrist, he ultimately recognizes that
in order to heal from his painful life, he must surrender to the feminine realm
of emotion, love and compassion.
8
CHAPTER II
NARRATTVTS PRESENCES:
THE FOUNDATION OF THE FEMINIST TEXT
The Infinite Plan, more than any of Allende's other works, presents a
fascinating narrative pattern that empowers the woman as the controller of
the text and as the primary storyteller. Despite the fact that the protagonist,
Gregory Reeves, is a male, several narrative presences, or voices, inform the
text and make it feminist. These presences include a female omniscient
narrator; the feminist reality of the twentieth century; the paratext, primarily
the epigraphs from Violeta Parra and Reeves himself; and Reeves'
confessions to his psychiatrist and the narrator. The novel is a novel of
growth for its protagonist, in which Reeves learns to cope with a painful past,
a past that involves chauvinism, violence, rape, and war, all of which
traditionally exist in the male's world. By the end of the novel. Reeves
recognizes that in order to heal, he must learn to love, to be passionate, and
to talk, all of which exist in the female realm. He must not only learn to
value the opposite sex but he must feel as a woman. The narrative structure
of the novel guides him in this process.
This chapter gives an overview of the narrative presences that exist in
the novel. In order to visualize the framework, readers should see Figure 1 at
the end of this chapter, which shows the narrative levels and their relation to
the center of the novel. The following chapters explain in detail how the dual
narrators, the female narrator and Reeves, uphold Allende's feminist theme.
The Infinite Plan contains many narrative presences, or narrative
voices, as Gerard Genette explains in Narrative Discourse: "The subject...
being not only the person who carries out or submits to the action, but also
the person (the same one or another) who reports it, and, if need be, those
people who participate, even though passively, in this narrating activity"
(213). Narrative presences also include anything that affects the narration.
Thus only two traditional narrators, per se, exist in this novel: an omniscient
female narrator, who is also the lover of Reeves, and Reeves, the protagonist.
A series of narrative presences also inform and mold the novel, some that
exist outside the text and some that exist within. Other narrative presences
outside the text but important to the text are: the sexual reality of the
twentieth century, including both the author's and reader's perceptions of it;
the paratext, most importantly the epigraphs from Violeta Parra and Reeves;
and Reeves' complete confessions to the narrator which she alludes to and
chooses from for the novel but does not reveal in full. Important narrative
presences within the text include: the presence of the character Ming
O'Brien, Reeves' psychiatrist; the omniscient narrator and lover of Reeves;
and finally. Reeves as the narrator.
10
Surrounding the text and informing the text is the sexual reality of the
twentieth century, specifically gender relationships and how they have
changed because of the feminist movement. The novel concerns itself
particularly with the positive change of the status of women that occurred
from the 1940s and 1950s to the 1990s and the hopefulness of continued
change. The awareness of this phenomenon occurs at both the writer's and
reader's experience. Allende writes as a woman concerned with women's
issues. Naturally, as the writer, she has initial control over what happens in
the text, and she creates, for example, an omniscient female narrator who has
a feminist agenda which she frequently interjects. The narrator comments:
Customs were changing drastically during those years, and
mistakes like Carmen's became a daily occurrence; it seemed
senseless to continue to punish her as if she were the spawn of
Satan. Pregnancies outside marriage were a common theme in
films, television serials, and novels, and in real life famous
actresses were having children without identifying the father,
feminists were advocating women's right to an abortion, and
hippies were coupling in public parks in full view of anyone
who wanted to watch. (212)
While the narrator exists independently from Allende, Allende has given her
a feminist voice. As the premise for the entire thesis suggests, the narrative
structure results because of Allende's predilection for feminism.
Allende depends upon her readers both being aware of and
sympathizing with a feminist point of view. The contexts outside the text
exist as grounds on which the reader and author negotiate, with the author
11
exploiting the situations, and the reader using them as contexts through
which to view the text. Her reading audience, as she describes it, includes:
mainly young people, more women than men. . . . There's an
age in between ~ especially males, white males ~ who don't
relate to my writing very well. I've discovered that because of
the lecturing tours where I face an audience and can more or
less see if there are more women or men, the age range, and
how they look ~ lots of students, very yoimg people all the
time. {Contemporary Literature 594)
Scholars, of course, have never determined the ratio of men to women who
read her books, but in order for her novel to work, Allende needs and wants
a female audience. Her ideal reader, she once commented, would be a
twenty-year old Chilean girl named Alejandra Jorquera, who had memorized
parts of Allende's novel by heart (Kenyon Review 118). Allende fully expects
her readers to change, to take the concepts of the novel and grow from them.
She writes:
You find that there is someone who has read your book . . . and
how every reader writes the other half of the book. You only
give them half, and they provide the rest with their own
biography, with their experiences, their values. It's amazing; it's
always a different book. {Contemporary Literature 599)
Not only must the reader be aware of feminist concerns in the twentieth
century, then, but the way the reader interprets those concerns in the novel
will affect the way in which the reader changes because of them. And, if the
reader understands the feminist reality outside the text, then the reader is
more likely to understand the importance of the change in Reeves.
12
The next levels outside the novel itself are the paratexts, most
importantly the two epigraphs. One is from a Chilean folk song by Violeta
Parra, and the other is a direct quote from a section of the novel that Reeves
narrates. The purpose of these particular quotes is to reveal the inconsistency
in the way men and women perceive and cope with life. The first epigraph
reads: "My thanks to life, for all it has given, for all the laughter and tears I have
lived. . . . Violeta Parra, Chile." The second epigraph reads:
I am alone, at dawn, on the mountaintop. Below, through the
milky mist, I see the bodies of my friends.... Stealthy shadows
are climbing toward me. Silence. I wait. They approach. I fire
against dark silhouettes in black pajamas, faceless ghosts. I feel
the recoil of the machine g u n . . . . The attackers have become
transparent. .. they continue their implacable advance. I am
surrounded.... Silence.... My own scream wakes me, and I
keep screaming, screaming....
Both quotes suggest entirely different ways to cope with hardship. Parra's
quote itself is short but full of emotion. It celebrates life, even for its capacity
to provide both laughter and sorrow, and it suggests that the writer is
comfortable in dealing with both emotions. Indeed, both laughter and
emotion "live" and have been intricate parts of her existence. The few words
are italicized, which softens them and suggests a whisper. Reeves' quote, in
contrast, is long and harshly written. He is obviously uncomfortable with
pain, pain from war, from an abusive father, and from unrequited love, and
he allows it to overwhelm him. His outlet for pain is the machine gun, not
laughter or tears. He cannot communicate his pain to others, and his silent
13
screams surround him. Ultimately, Reeves will have to learn to perceive life
as Parra does, as a woman does, in order for him to heal from his painful
past.
The next level outside the text, but essential to it, is Reeves'
confessions to the narrator, presumably his lover. Throughout the novel, the
narrator gives occasional glimpses of her relationship to him, and only at the
end of the novel, does Reeves reveal his relationship to the narrator: "You
know the rest, because we've lived it together. The night we met, you asked
me to tell you my story. It's very long, I warned you. That's all right, I have
a lot of time, you said, not suspecting what you were getting into when you
walked into this infinite plan" (382). Thus, Reeves has confessed his life
problems to the narrator, and she has filtered those problems and presented
them to the reader. While the narrator herself is significant, what she chooses
not to disclose about Reeves is equally as important. The confessionary
structure of the novel makes the reader aware that the narrator has total
control over Reeves' story and that she has carefully chosen what to reveal
about him; consequently, the reader sees Reeves' weaknesses and
dependence upon the female.
The confessionary construction exists within the novel itself in the
character of Ming O'Brien. O'Brien is a minor character who never narrates,
but her presence is important to the narration. She has heard Reeves'
14
• ~ \
confessions even before the narrator; thus, without her, the omniscient
narration and novel could not exist. Because of her, the reader understands
that Reeves has or is undergoing a psychological transformation and that the
confessions will heal him. Important, too, is that the person who allows him
to tell his tale to the narrator is a female psychiatrist. Thus, two women
ultimately listen to his pain and comfort him. The confessionary structure
emphasizes the novel as a novel of growth for the protagonist.
The most important level of the text, of course, is the actual narration.
The novel contains a female narrator who is both a heterodiegetic narrator
(omniscient and removed from the story, Genette 244-5) and a homodiegetic
narrator (a character in the story, Genette 245). At times, the narrator is
objective and removed from the text, as a traditional omniscient narrator, and
knows facts about Reeves' life that she could not have known from simply
listening to him recall his childhood: "That very day, the priest, who in his
youth had been a belligerent peasant boy, shut himself in the courtyard of the
sacristy with Gregory and began teaching him to box" (49), That the narrator
knows the priest's history suggests her omnipotence. Often, though, the
narrator inserts her opinions and her impression of Reeves' growth:
Gregory never accepted those standards and for the next thirty
years relentlessly pursued the chimera of perfect love,
stumbling more times than he could count, falling and picking
himself up, running an interminable obstacle course, until he
gave up the search and learned to live in solitude. Then, in one
of life's ironic surprises, he found love when he least expected
it. But that is another story. (113)
15
The quote illustrates that the narrator knows Reeves personally, but it also
illustrates the narrator's bias toward him. She, in fact, alludes to her
relationship with him, early in the novel when the reader cannot yet
appreciate its significance. Thus the narrator is more than an objective,
omniscient teller: she has a vested interest in helping Reeves recover.
The temptation exists to equate the female narrator with the author, as
Perricone has suggested. Certainly, the novel hints at biographical
references, and it is all too convenient that the narrator is a writer and that
Allende's present husband grew up in California, had a turbulent first fifty
years, and is a lawyer, all of which Allende reveals in her newest
autobiography of sorts, Paula. However, the narrator in The Infinite Plan
exists independently of the author. Of course Allende has created her and
has incorporated in her novel some references to her husband's life, but like
all of her characters, the narrator develops on her own. Allende commented
in an interview on her characters:
I have a feeling I don't invent them [characters]. I don't create
them; they are there. They are somewhere in the shadows, and
when I start writing .. . little by little they come out of their
shadow into the light. But when they come out into the light,
they are already people. They have their own personalities. . . .
I don't invent them; somehow they are there. {Points of
Departure 119)
As the warning professes on the title page of the novel, "This novel is a work
of fiction. The names, characters, and events portrayed are the product of the
16
author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or actual persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental." While references dot the novel,
critics must stray from reading the novel biographically. Thematically, the
important facts to remember about the narrator are that she is female, she
loves Reeves, and she has an investment in his recovery.
Interspersed in the narrator's telling of Reeves life. Reeves himself
makes an occasional entrance. As discussed in Chapter III, his stories unveil
his struggles of being a man in a man's world. Often, his narrated sections
reflect upon prior incidents that he or the narrator may have already
mentioned. The narrations themselves are buried beneath the presence of a
feminist world, the epigraphs, his own confessions to others, and a female
narrator who knows more about his life than he does. But ultimately, they
evidence his path to growth and maturity, which is the result of the females
in the text, particularly O'Brien and the narrator. All of the narrative
presences within the novel help structure the novel as a feminist text.
Feminism in the twentieth century and the paratext provide a frame. Reeves'
confessions to the narrator and to O'Brien empower the woman as storyteller
and as healer. Reeves must enter the world of woman: he must love, care, be
passionate, cry, feel, and, most importantly, talk. The women in the novel,
O'Brien and the narrator, guide him to confess, to reveal, to expose his and
pain and, consequently, to find himself.
17
Feminism in the twentieth centiny
Paratext: epigraph from Violeta Parra and from Gregory Reeves
Reeves' confessions to narrator
Presence of Ming O'Brien, the psychiatrist
Extradiegetic level: omniscient narrator
Intradiegetic level: narrator,
lover of Reeves
Metadiegetic level: Reeves as narrator
Mimesis: dialogue between all characters
Figure 1: Narrative Levels of The Infinite Plan
18
CHAPTER III
UNDERMINING THE TRADITIONAL ]VIALE NARRATION:
THE OMNISCIENT FEMALE NARRATOR'S
CONTROL OF THE NOVEL
The Infinite Plan has two narrators: Gregory Reeves, who is also the
protagonist of the novel, and his unnamed female lover, who is both
homodiegetic (a character within the novel) and heterodiegetic or omniscient
(Genette 245). The story is one of enlightenment for the protagonist, who
ultimately frees himself from the machismo of the barrio. Despite his central
role. Reeves narrates his life story in only thirteen brief sections; the
omniscient female narrator creates the rest of his past based on confessions
that Reeves reveals to her. This narrator is the most powerful figure in the
novel. She controls the text, creating a fictional past out of Reeves'
confessions and allowing him only selected chances to voice his story. She
likewise toys with her reader, carefully hiding her identity as Reeves' lover
until he exposes the truth at the conclusion of the novel. Superficially, Reeves
commands his own growth and healing, but the omniscient female narrator
overwhelms the novel and guides his movement at her own will.
Reeves' lover as narrator is troubling because she is both a character
and an omniscient voice; she also switches between the roles unexpectedly.
In both roles, she is far from objective and often inserts bold opinions:
19
"[Carmen's] fiery nature was at odds with the double standard that made
prisoners of women but granted a hunting license to men" (136). Often, it is
difficult to distinguish the narrator from the author or the implied author,
which Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction defines as one "who stands
behind the scenes, whether as stage manager, as puppeteer, or as an
indifferent God . . . . This implied author is always distinct from the 'real
man' ~ whatever we may take him to be ~ who creates a superior version of
himself, a 'second self,' as he creates his work" (151). The confusion
complicates itself, especially concerning the women's issues in the novel.
Within the novel are the following: Allende, the author, who always
includes women's issues as a subject but who very carefully eludes the label
-I
of feminist; an implied author who perhaps is more bold than Allende in
establishing the feminist agenda in the text; and a narrator who voices the
opinions of the implied author but who, as a character, also has a vested
interest in the protagonist. Ultimately, because of the elaborate structure of
the novel (especially the premise for its existence, i.e., the confessions of
See the following interviews and articles for Allende's views on feminism:
Interview. Ed. Ines Dolz-Blackburn, George McMurray, Paul Rea, and Alfonso Rodriguez.
Confluencia 6:1 i¥a\\ 1990): 93-104; Interview. "Isabel Allende Unveiled." Ed. Douglas
Foster. Mother Jones (Dec. \98S): 43-46; Interview. Points of Departure. Ed. David
Montenegro. Ann Arbor, Michigan: U of Michigan P, 1991. 110-26; and "Writing as an Act
of Hope." In Paths of Resistance: The Art and Craft of the Political Novel. Hd. William Zinsser,
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.
20
Reeves retold by his lover), the control reverts entirely to the omniscient
female narrator.
Controlling female narrators and/or protagonists are common in
Allende's novels and short stories. Although The House of Spirits has three
narrators, the story is told from the perspective of Alba, the granddaughter
who has read her grandmother's diary. She recounts three generations of the
Trueba family and, as Flora Schiminovich suggests in her article, "Two
Modes of Writing the Female Self," the diary becomes a "feminist confession"
for all the women in the Trueba family (107). In The Stories of Eva Luna, Eva
Luna, who is also the protagonist of the novel by the same name, writes the
stories both to entertain and to teach her lover, Rolf Carle, the importance of
love and communication. In the prologue to the collection of stories, Rolf
speaks of Eva's talent as a writer and implores her to tell tales for him: "You
think in words; for you, language is an inexhaustible thread you weave as if
life were created as you tell i t . . . . Tell me a story you have never told
anyone before. Make it up for me" (4-5). Thus Eva produces all of her
marvelous stories for her lover's benefit; ultimately, her stories help him to
begin the long process of healing from a troubling history of family abuse
and war.
The female omniscient narrator in The Infinite Plan likewise has a
preestablished goal of helping Reeves recover from a painful past, an idea
21
which roots itself in the confessionary nature of the telling. The narrator is
not the first person to whom Reeves reveals his traumatic past; his first
confession is to Ming O'Brien, a psychiatrist. As will be discussed in detail in
Chapter IV, the reader understands that Reeves has or is undergoing a
psychological transformation and that the confessions are a part of therapy.
The omniscient female narrator exists secondarily to the psychiatrist because,
without her initial prodding. Reeves would never have been strong enough
to speak with a stranger about his pain. Reeves recalls the first time he
visited Ming O'Brien's office: "After a great deal of hesitation, I overcame
the notion that men don't talk about their weaknesses or their problems, a
prejudice instilled during my youth in the barrio, where that premise is one
of the basic tenets of manhood" (345). Finally, Reeves deals with the sexual
and gender issues that have plagued him and imparts them to the narrator,
as the reader discovers at the end of the novel. The narrator moves one step
beyond just listening, however, when she recounts his life in the novel itself.
This process of listening and telling is similar to the structure of The Stories of
Eva Luna. Rolf listens to Eva tell stories, but Eva's stories often mirror
problems in Rolf's life. Likewise, in The Infinite Plan, Reeves tells his lover
stories of his past but the lover becomes the final storyteller, as she records
the stories in the novel.
22
In the process of retelling, the omniscient female narrator gives his life
thematic importance; that is, she suggests that his problems relate to his
manhood: his sexuality, his lack of compassion for women, his machismo, his
natural instinct for war, and his inability to feel. While these do form the
heart of his problem, she, as the controller of the text, structures his entire life
around them. She brings to attention certain subject matter of her own that
directly contrasts with Reeves' behavior or that explains the environment in
which he was raised; for example, the narrator highlights issues such as sex
before marriage and abortion. The narrator comments on the sexual urges of
Ernestina Pereda, one of Reeves' teenage lovers:
The social climate that would view sex as a healthful exercise
without risk of pregnancy or obstacle of guilt had not yet
appeared on the horizon. Ernestina Pereda was one of those
beings destined to explore the abyss of the senses, and it was
her fate to have been born fifteen years too soon, at a time when
women had to choose between decency and pleasure ~ and
Ernestina lacked the courage to renounce either. (Ill)
This passage suggests that Ernestina is a victim of a culture that does not
allow women to experiment with their sexual pleasures. The narrator also
criticizes the danger of cultural restrictions on sex, especially in terms of
Carmen's unwanted pregnancy and consequent abortion: "Like Gregory,
Carmen had fallen in love at the drop of a hat, always with breathtaking
passion, but unlike him she was bound by the patriarchal traditions of her
family and society" (136). Patriarchal ties are even stronger in the barrio.
23
when Carmen is forced to have an illegal abortion because she cannot face
her family or survive in the community as a unmarried mother:
This was her hour of truth, and she must face it alone; it was
one thing to talk a big game, making vaguely feminist
statements, but something quite different to be an unmarried
mother in her corner of the world. She knew that her family
would never speak to her again; they would throw her out of
the house, out of her clan, even out of the barrio. Her father
and her brothers would die of shame; she would have to bring
up the baby all by herself, support it and look after it alone, and
find some kind of work to survive. Women would repudiate
her, and men would treat her like a prostitute. (139)
The narrator emphasizes the double standard in the community: men like
Reeves can and are encouraged to freely have sex, while women like Carmen
must refrain and beware of the grave consequences of testing the boundaries.
Reeves is part of this double standard, but his problems, according to
the structure of the text, stem from his placement in the "male" category. The
narrator emphasizes the problem on the very first page of the novel:
Forty-some years later, during a long confession in which he
reviewed his life and drew up an accounting of his errors and
achievements, Gregory Reeves told me of his earliest memory:
a boy of four, himself, urinating on a hilltop at sunset, the
horizon stained red and amber by the last rays of the sun; at his
back were the sharp peaks of the hills, and, below, a plain
stretched farther than the eye could see. The warm liquid flows
like some essence of body and spirit, each drop, as it sinks into
the dirt, marking the territory with its signature. He prolongs
the pleasure, playing with the stream, tracing a topaz-colored
circle on the dust. (5)
Urination as a pivotal point is not uncommon in modern and postmodern
literature; the epiphany in James Joyce's Ulysses, for example, is the
24
simultaneous urination of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom (702). In The
Infinite Plan, although the memory is Reeves' first, the narrator has chosen it
to expose Reeves' struggle with the cultural expectations for his gender. In
this early stage in his life. Reeves is at peace with himself, as the beauty of the
landscape indicates and as the narrator comments: "All is well; for the first
time he is aware of happiness; it is a moment he will never forget" (6). But
the quote shows the early stages of a knowledge of power associated to
masculinity: like a male dog exerting his sexual prowess in the
neighborhood. Reeves' urine marks his territory. The inherently masculine
action is his "body and spirit," an inescapable but tormenting facet of his life.
Thus, the narrator establishes early in the novel that gender and sexual
identity are at the core of his problems.
Being in control of the text, the narrator also chooses when Reeves
speaks and the subject matter of that speech. This act is especially significant,
when one considers that the protagonist of the story is Reeves, and thus the
narration should technically belong to him. But Reeves only narrates thirteen
brief times. Since the omniscient female narrator has heard his story, she
decides what should come directly from Reeves and what she should retell.
Both her narration and Reeves' narration focus primarily on his sexual
problems, including but not limited to Reeves' witnessing of a rape. Reeves'
first sexual experience with Olga, Reeves' experience as a rape victim, his
25
father's public masturbation, and his sister's rape at the hands of her own
father. Reeves grows up and lives as an adult in a perverse world and hence
he cannot decide for himself what constitutes normal sexual relationships, a
problem the narrator highlights.
The narrator also assumes control over the novel by switching into an
omniscient narrator, revealing things about Gregory's world and the
characters in it that Reeves could not know. Parts of the novel exist beyond
Reeves' existence, even though the narrator freely comments on them.
Carmen, for example, spends eleven weeks in Vietnam, adopting her dead
brother's son. The narrator reveals the entire affair, although, according to
the framework of the novel, the narrator should only know what Reeves has
told her. The narrator also knows details about Reeves' college roommate,
Timothy Duane, details that Reeves may have alluded to but certainly did
not dwell on in one evening of intimate conversation:
Timothy Duane never forgave his father for having brought
him into this world, nor for continuing to thwart his heart's
desires with his good health and bad humor. To defy him,
Duane committed every known atrocity, always making sure
his father knew about it, and so wasted fifty years in a festering
hatred that cost him his peace and well-being. (283)
To some degree, the narrator has fictionalized Reeves' past in her retelling of
it, an act that is inherent in autobiography. As Barrett Mandel suggests in
"The Past in Autobiography," the recollection of past is not fixed, and the
autobiographer's memory of that past is always in flux:
26
The memory speaks unequivocally. Here is a paradox: I create
my past. I possess it now. And yet I would have to be crazy to
deny that it possesses me too. My past has sought me out down
the long corridor of the years; it has obliterated present time
and space with the sprung force of its persuasiveness and the
charm of its possessiveness. Very little in life claims one's
allegiance as much as one's p a s t . . . . It can change, but it is I
who changes it. As I change it, it changes me. (84)
So retelling Reeves' life on the female lover's terms, based on her details and
word choices and thematic structure, creates something beyond
verisimilitude: it creates a fiction that the reader, in turn, interprets in light
of his or her own experiences.
The narrator also manipulates the reader because she hides her
relationship to Reeves. She introduces herself on the first page of the novel:
"Forty-some years later, during a long confession in which he reviewed his
life and drew up an accounting of his errors and achievements, Gregory
Reeves told me of his earliest memory" (5). Although she reveals that she is
basing this recounting of his life on confessions he has made to her, she hides
her role as his lover. Throughout the body of the novel, the narrator only
gives occasional glimpses of her relationship to Reeves:
Gregory never accepted those standards and for the next thirty
years relentlessly pursued the chimera of perfect love,
stumbling more times than he could count, falling and picking
himself up, running an interminable obstacle course, until he
gave up the search and learned to live in solitude. Then, in one
of life's ironic surprises, he found love when he least expected
it. But that is another story- (113)
27
This passage comes fairly early in the novel, and it only alludes to their love
interest. The narrator suggests, rather egotistically, that she is the lover he
ultimately finds. Quickly, however, she reverts the conversation to "but that
is another story." In other words, the narrator keeps the reader in suspense
(and the careless reader, in ignorance), waiting to discover the truth, which
Reeves reveals on the last page of the novel. Also, his final words reflect a
new-found confidence in self, in talking, that the machismo of the barrio once
barred from his life. The narrator allows Reeves to present the final evidence
of their affair, superficially granting him control of his own story. Despite
the fact that he has the final words, these words reflect the narrator's key role
in his life.
The final question in looking at this female narrator is to understand
her purpose in manipulating the text, not simply explaining that she does.
Critics have noted Allende's powerful storytellers and/or narrators,
especially concerning her first novel. The House of Spirits. Maureen Shea in
"A Growing Awareness of Sexual Oppression in the Novel of Contemporary
Latin American Writers" writes that "the perspective of the female narrator
brings to light similar patterns that are emerging in Latin American works
written by women, especially the concentration on patriarchal abuse of the
female body and psyche" (53). Linda Gould Levine in "A Passage to
Androgyny: Isabel Allende's La casa de los espfritus" suggests that, at least in
28
The House of Spirits, the female narrator. Alba, stifles the voice of Esteban.
Levine writes that the normal structure of the dual-narrator novel is
the 'double-voiced discourse'... a discourse in which the
'dominant' voice is male and the 'muted' story, female. In
Allende's novel, the dominant voice is Alba's, a discourse
composed of her own voice, Clara's, and many other's, while
the secondary voice, certainly not as resonant, is Esteban's. (16970)
In the case of The Infinite Plan, the female narrator is not only dominant but
manipulative and controlling. The effect of her manipulation is that she
reverses gender roles with Reeves. Throughout the novel. Reeves attempts to
free himself from the rigid definition of "male" ~ lack of compassion for
women, brute sexuality, natural instinct for war, and an inability to feel and
to communicate. By the end, he learns to find the "female" side of himself ~
compassion, love, and communication. While female presences in the text
guide his recovery, as discussed in Chapter II, the omniscient female narrator
assumes a traditional male role and dominates his life story. Her control of
the text plays in well with the shifting of gender roles throughout the text,
especially Reeves' need to suffer as a woman in order to ultimately "feel" as
a woman, and it certainly undermines a traditional male narrative.
29
CHAPTER IV
THE NARRATIONS OF GREGORY REEVES:
HIS GROWTH INTO THE FEMININE REALM
While two narrators exist within The Infinite Plan, Gregory Reeves and
his unnamed female lover, the omruscient female narrator is the primary
narrator, as she recounts the past that Reeves has told her in confidence. But
Reeves' own narration represents his growth and change in character: he
changes from a man tormented by the sexual perversions of his family and
the extreme sexism of the barrio into a man comfortable with his need to be
heard, to be loved, and to be cared for by a loving partner.
He narrates
thirteen brief sections in the novel, sections which occur sporadically
throughout the entire novel. The sections increase from brief passages of two
to three pages to the final ten pages of the novel, when Reeves confidently
reveals the progress he has made in therapy with his psychiatrist, Ming
O'Brien. All of his passages concern sexual issues, from gender roles to
molestation and rape. Reeves' narrations reveal him to be a man who is
struggling to escape the traditional masculine realm of lust, power and
destruction. His survival depends on his ability to surrender to the feminine
realm of emotion, love and compassion. The text suggests that masculine
behavior is perverse and destructive; that Reeves' primary goal is to escape
30
this behavior; and that Reeves heals because of his ability to experience life
from the feminine perspective.
The entire novel revolves around the concept that a person's gender
defines his or her place in society, a concept Julia Kristeva explains thus:
Sexual difference ~ which is at once biological, physiological,
and relative to production ~ is translated by and translates a
difference in the relationship of subjects to the symbolic
contract which is the social contract: a difference, then, in the
relationship to power, language and meaning. (81-82, as qtd. in
The Feminist Reader)
In western culture, patriarchal society dominates and hinders the progress of
women. The structure depends upon men being dominant, lustful, and
unemotional and upon women being submissive, emotional and
compassionate. In this novel in particular, the machismo of the barrio
compounds an already existent sexist culture in the United States. The men
and women within the novel are products of gender assumptions. Carmen,
for example, will not attend college because it contradicts expected norms for
women. The omniscient female narrator writes:
[Carmen'sl father never publicly acknowledged her worth; that
would have been a surrender of his macho principles. He sent
his two daughters to school because that was the law, and
although it was not his intention to keep them in ignorance,
neither did he expect them to take their studies seriously;
instead, they were to learn domestic skills, help their mother,
and guard their virginity until the day they were married ~ the
only ambition for a decent girl. (73)
31
The men within the novel, including Reeves' best friend in college, Timothy
Duane, typify stereotypical images of the playboy, men who cannot make
commitments or be involved in meaningful relationships. Duane remarks
that women "are black widow spiders; if you don't stay free of them you can
never be yourself and will exist only to please them" (254). Duane spends
the majority of the novel pursuing unfullfilling, sexual romances. Hence, the
novel juxtaposes the stereotypes of men and women in a sexist society and
suggests that the world in which Reeves lives is a world structured around
these gender expectations. Although this patriarchal society forms Reeves'
view of life, he struggles to free himself from his expected role as a macho
man, an inner struggle that his narrations reveal.
Reeves challenges patriarchal norms by virtue of the fact that he
discusses his problems with both a female psychiatrist and with a female
lover. The very act of confession violates norms within the male world,
particularly in the barrio, where masculine prowess defines life for everyone.
Despite the fact that Reeves is Anglo and has been transplanted into the
Hispanic culture, machismo greatly influences his behavior. Reeves comes to
understand the significance late in the novel, when he faces O'Brien in her
office: "After a great deal of hesitation, I overcame the notion that men don't
talk about their weaknesses or their problems, a prejudice instilled during
my youth in the barrio, where that premise is one of the basic tenents of
32
manhood" (343). But the fact that Reeves can acknowledge his attitude
suggests that he is willing to change the shape of his life.
Revealing his deepest thoughts to a female psychiatrist compounds the
difficulty of confession. When Reeves first meets O'Brien, he has difficulty
coping with his sexist attitude:
What I need is a Freud in skirts, I thought, but after an overly
long pause . . . it occurred to me to tell the dream about the
mountain. I know I began in an ironic tone, sitting with my
legs up, evaluating my interrogator with an eye trained to
judge women; I've seen plenty, and in those days I was still
assigning them a grade on a scale of one to ten. The doc's not
bad, I decided; she rates a seven, give or take a little. (344)
His visit to O'Brien's office constitutes gender role reversal and thus
threatens Reeves' masculinity: Reeves assumes the role of submissive client,
while O'Brien assumes the role of dominator. Being a client lends itself to
exposing one's vulnerability, emotion, desires, and dreams, an act which
directly contradicts male norms of composure and silence. Feminist theorist
Helene Cixous suggests that this fear of exposure is inherent in all men:
But at the same time, man has been given the grotesque and
unenviable fate of being reduced to a single idol with clay balls.
And terrified of homosexuality, as Freud and his followers
remark. Why does a man fear being a woman? Why this
refusal (Ablehnung) of femininity? {Sorties 104)
Thus, Reeves' willingness to open himself up for analysis suggests a
willingness to overcome traditional male norms and to recognize himself in
the role of female.
33
Also important is the reversal of sexual power, which immediately
challenges the male. It is curious that Allende makes direct comparisons
between O'Brien and Freud and that Reeves directly calls O'Brien a "Freud
in skirts" (344). Although Freud openly discussed sexual repression and
relationships, feminists have labeled him a gynophobic, or one who is fearful
of the female. Toril Moi states in her analysis of Freud's Dora that "Freud's
epistemology is clearly phallocentric. The male is the bearer of knowledge:
he alone has the power to penetrate woman and text; woman's role is to let
herself be penetrated by such truth" (398). Thus, the male psychiatrist alone
has the key to manufacture the female client's sexual identity. Allende has
reversed the power construct, giving a female psychiatrist control over a
male client's identity of self, including his gender and sexual self.
Sexual power identifies itself as the key conflict in Reeves' life.
Indeed, the text suggests that at the core of being male is an oxymoronic play
between causing pleasure and causing pain. The very first page of the novel
presents this underlying theme, as the narrator reveals Reeves' first memory
of urinating on top of a mountain. As Chapter III suggests, the act of
urination emphasizes power associated to masculinity: his urine marks his
territory, and thus he identifies pleasure with territorial control. Later the
theme reemerges in Reeves' experience in Vietnam, where the worst battle
34
occurs not on a hilltop but on a mountaintop. Reeves explains the guiltridden secret of man's desire for war:
It's something more than the primordial instinct to do battle,
more than blood lust: pleasure. I discovered that on the
mountain. I don't dare say the word aloud, it would bring bad
luck, but I repeat it over and over to myself: pleasure, pleasure.
The most intense pleasure you can experience, much more
intense than sex: thirst satiated, first love, requited, divine
revelation, say those who know what it is. (223)
Throughout the novel, both Reeves and the omniscient female narrator
emphasize this theme. Reeves, for example, compares his sexual experiences
to war: "During that stage of my life, sex was like the violence of the war; it
was a malignant form of contact that in the end left me with a terrible
emptiness" (255). Directly related to man's sexuality, then, is the desire to
control, to destroy and to kill.
Allende identifies the sexual behavior of males as not only violent, but
also as a perverse illness, an idea that exemplifies itself in Reeves' father,
Charles Reeves. Reeves reveals to us in his second narration that, as a child,
he discovers that his father has molested his sister Judy. Charles Reeves'
sexual behavior is symbolized in the deterioration of his body; as the cancer
consumes him, so worsens his sexual perversion. Reeves describes his
father's final moments:
At that moment I was struck by a strong blast of the odor of
almonds, and a squalid old man appeared in the doorway of
the room; he was standing very straight, clad only in an
undershirt, and was barefoot; his remaining hair was ruffled,
his eyes burning with the madness of fever, and a thread of
35
saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth. With his left hand,
he supported himself against the wall; with his right he was
masturbating. (64)
The scene itself is nauseating, as the illness and medications coalesce in the
smell of almonds. Even in a feverish state, his natural impulse is not to die
quietly and honorably, but to self-indulge. His illness is not only symbolized
as death and decay but as something purely evil. Reeves recalls his
impression of his dying father: "In my dreams I saw my father as a creaking
skeleton in a dark suit, with a huge snake coiled around his ankles, and
awake I remembered him shrunken to skin and bones" (53). His illness, an
illness of sexual perversion and evil, has literally destroyed him.
The ultimate result of the perverse sexual behavior is death and
destruction, which identifies itself in the war but which also identifies itself
in the plight of the women in the novel. Male behavior completely destroys
the life of Judy, for example, who, as a direct result of her father, learns to
hate all men. Male behavior also destroys Carmen, who is forced to have an
abortion in part because her lover, Tom Clayton, is unwilling to take
responsibility for his unborn child. Allende directly links Carmen's decision
to have an abortion with the patriarchal barrio around her:
This was her hour of truth, and she must face it alone; it was
one thing to talk a big game, making vaguely feminist
statements, but something quite different to be an unmarried
mother in her corner of the world. She knew that her family
would never speak to her again; they woidd throw her out of
the house, out of her clan, even out of the barrio. (139)
36
In essence, then, it is not Clayton who forces her to have the abortion, but the
barrio itself. The onmiscient female narrator describes the scene:
Bound by wrists and ankles to the kitchen table, a rag stuffed in
her mouth to prevent her screams from being heard outside, she
bore the pain until she could stand no more and made signs
that she would prefer anything to this torture
After it was
over. Carmen, with an ice pack on her belly, lay weeping
imcontrollably.. .. Thirty hours later, when she still had not
awakened but seemed to be wandering in the delirium of a
different world, while a thread of blood, thin but constant, was
staining the sheets red, Olga knew that for once her lucky star
had failed her. (140-41)
Man's sexual pleasure results in death ~ be it on the battlefield or in the
tortuous pain of a back-alley abortion. Michel Foucault in his History of
Sexuality suggests that before this century, man's power rested in
bloodletting and that this century, "we . . . are in a society of 'sex,' or rather a
society 'with a sexuality': the mechanisms of power are addressed to the
body, to life, to what causes it to proliferate, to what reinforces the species, its
stamina, its ability to dominate, or its capacity for being used" (147). But
Allende's novel suggests that man's desire for bloodshed connects itself to
man's sexual urges, that the two coexist.
Rather than harp on the evil nature of the masculine sexual domain,
the novel guides its protagonist in healing, in recognizing his sexual conflicts
and in allowing him to feel, to love, to be compassionate ~ in short, to
experience the feminine realm. In order to completely heal, he must cope
with the difficult memories of his past, a process that is painstakingly slow.
37
He recalls these memories not as a person who has recovered from old
wounds, but as a person who still suffers from the trauma of the suppressed
event. His narratives that deal with the most difficult memories, including a
rape he witnessed as a young boy and a rape he suffers at the hands of a
schoolmate, read as confessions made under hypnosis. The scene in which
he tells of his witnessing a rape begins thus:
The heat is unrelenting, the ground is parched; it has not rained
since the beginning of time, and the world seems to be covered
with a fine reddish powder. A harsh light distorts the outlines
of things; the horizon is lost in a haze of dust. It is one of those
nameless towns like so many others. (24)
Reeves discloses the incident in the present tense, and the short, choppy
clauses suggest that he is under hypnosis and telling the story as it is
happening. The dream-like details, including the haziness and the distortion
of the light, suggest that Reeves is uncovering something deep within his
subconscious. Later details in this passage support the notion that Reeves has
never disclosed the event before: "I can't breathe," he screams, "I try to call
my father, I open my mouth but nothing comes out; I swallow fire, a scream
fills me inside, I am choking" (24). These are details of the event as it
happened in the past, but they may also be expressions of his state of mind
during the hypnosis, particularly since he recalls the event in present tense.
Other parts of his narrations suggest that he cannot always remember
the traumatic events of his childhood and that he suffers from denial.
38
Although Judy often reminds him of his father's perverse behavior. Reeves
cannot remember:
We [Judy and Reeves] have talked . . . and do not agree about
either events or people, as if we had been protagonists in
different stories. We lived together in the same house at the
same time; her memory, nevertheless, did not register what
mine did. My sister cannot understand why I cling to the
image of a wise father.... She swears that things were never
like that, that the violence of our family was always there....
She accuses me of having blocked out the past. (61)
Unlike the passages in which he directly recalls difficult memories, this
passage reveals a Reeves who simply cannot or does not allow himself to
suffer the pain of his youth. Reeves fully controls his emotions, and he
recalls the past but does not retell it as if it were happening in the present.
Reeves' own narrations contradict his memory of a perfect father; in fact, in
this same narrated section. Reeves describes his father's perverse illness. His
healing, then, is a gradual process and one full of inconsistencies in thought;
only toward the end of the novel does any evidence of change exist. In
retrospect, the reader can, of course, distinguish pivotal events, but Reeves
himself is not aware fully of his changes until the end of the novel.
The primary evidence of growth exists in the fact that Reeves openly
discusses his problems. As stated earlier. Reeves challenges patriarchal
norms in the very act of telling his tale, particularly to a female, a process
which allows him to begin feeling and exposing his vulnerabilities. Also
39
important is that the novel forces him to experience life from a woman's
perspective. He experiences the humiliation and pain of rape:
That was how Martinez took me, from behind. I still feel the
knife blade against my throat, but I don't think I'm bleeding
anymore. If you move I'll kill you, you fucking sonofabitch
gringo, and I had no way to defend myself, all I could do was
cry and curse while he was doing it to me. (82)
Reeves also endures the loss of a child. Symbolically, Reeves suffers as
Carmen suffers from her abortion. Reeves' children are complete failures,
and Margaret, his daughter and eldest child, is destined to destroy herself
with drugs and alcohol. Reeves describes the pain of his loss, when he
discovers that Margaret has escaped from the hospital:
I had lost Margaret ~ since that day I have seen her only in jail
or in a hospital bed ~ I just didn't know it yet. It took me nine
years to let her go, nine years of frustrated hopes, useless
searching, phony regrets, endless thefts, betrayals, vulgarity,
suspicion, and humiliation, until finally I admitted in my heart
of hearts that I couldn't help her. (309)
Rape and abortion represent extreme violence against women, particularly in
this novel. That Reeves suffers from both ~ rape literally and abortion
figuratively ~ suggests that he has undergone the deepest pains of being a
woman.
Ultimately, Reeves also begins to recognize his own perverse and
brutal male sexuality. Reeves recalls a rape he witnessed as a young child:
I see two men. . . . They are wearing work overalls; they are
sweating, their shirts and hair are soaking wet. The fat one has
cornered a young black girl; she must be no more than ten or
twelve. . . . Now I can't see the girl; she is crushed between the
40
heavy bodies of the rapists. I want to turn; I am terrified, but I
also want to watch. I know that something fundamental and
forbidden is happening, I am a participant in a violent secret.
(24)
The rape is a pivotal image for Reeves, one that both intrigues him and
haunts him and one that returns to him later in life, as he himself violates a
young Vietnamese girl:
Suddenly I remembered something I'd seen in a dusty southern
town when I was five years old: two men raping a young
Negro girl, two giants crushing a terrified little girl between
them, a girl as small and fragile as the one I was with, and I felt
like one of them, huge and satanic, and my desire flowed from
me, and my erection with it. (195)
The horror and violence of the first rape triggers emotions of guilt in Reeves
and the acknowledgment of guilt removes his sexual desire. Although the
realization does not immediately change his behavior, he is beginning to
confront repressed feelings.
In the last ten pages of the novel. Reeves sums up his life and
calculates for the reader his accomplishments in therapy with O'Brien. This
section is the longest of his narrated sections, and it is the culmination of the
novel itself; the section illustrates Reeves' growth: his freedom from the
machismo of the barrio and his ability to feel the joy of talking, feeling, and
loving. For the entire novel, the onmiscient female narrator and the narrative
presences have stifled his voice. For the first time. Reeves comfortably
exposes himself and "chats" to both the reader and his lover about the
41
lessons of his life. Not only is he more talkative than he has ever been, he
reveals his healthy companionship with a woman. Instead of facing his past
alone. Reeves returns to the barrio with his lover:
Carmen had given me your second novel, and I read it during
that vacation, never suspecting that one day I would meet you
and make this long confession. How could I suspect then that
together we'd go back to the barrio where I grew up? In more
than four decades, it had never crossed my mind to go back.
(379)
She has helped him to confront his painful past, to talk about his problems,
and to depend upon her for guidance: "And now, just when I had stopped
looking for a companion, you appeared and compelled me to plant
rosebushes in solid ground" (381). Thus, his female lover has successfully
guided him to a path of recovery.
Not only has Reeves openly shared his emotions with his lover and
hence with the reader, he shows evidence of having freed himself from the
sexism and violence inherent in manhood. He has left the sexist world of his
life behind him: "My little black book with its list of ladies got lost in the
back of some drawer, and I've never come across it since" (374). For the first
time in the novel, he admits to the imperfections of a man's world. He
comments: "I questioned the validity of life with a sword in one hand,
eating myself up with meaningless combativeness. I still ask myself that
question but have no answer; I suppose I can't imagine life without a
struggle" (378). The most important part of recovery is admitting the
42
problem with the self: Reeves has acknowledged the futility of his pent-up
anger, even as he admits he will always struggle to suppress his natural
" combativeness."
Reeves' entire perception of life has changed, a change that he
poignantly illustrates in the recollection of his first memory:
I regressed to my first memory of happiness, myself at four,
urinating on a hilltop beneath the orange-streaked dome of a
magnificent sky at dusk. To measure the infinite vastness of the
space I had regained, I shouted my name there beside the lake,
and the echo from the mountains returned it to me, purified.
(379)
This memory actually exists on the very first page of the novel:
Gregory Reeves told me of his earliest memory: a boy of
four . . . urinating on a hilltop at sunset, the horizon stained red
and amber by the last rays of the sun; at his back were the sharp
peaks of the hills, and, below, a plain stretched farther than the
eye could see. The warm liquid flows like some essence of
body and spirit, each drop, as it sinks into the dirt, making the
territory with its signature. He prolongs the pleasure, playing
with the stream, tracing a topaz-colored circle on the dust. (5)
Chapter III discusses in detail the importance of the memory in relation to
Reeves' sexual problems. Although the two passages relate to the same
memory, the first account is self-centered, as it focuses on the urination,
specifically urination related to power and pleasure, rather than on the
beauty of the surrounding landscape. The omniscient female narrator also
reveals this first memory, in order to establish the theme of Reeves' problems
with male behavior and sexuality. Reeves gives the second accoimt of his
43
own memory and the focus does not emphasize power and masculinity;
instead, the memory is a purification, a cleansing of the mind spoiled by
sexism and sexual perversion.
Reeves' final narration ends the novel; he has discovered the value of
simply talking and of openly discussing his feelings and his imperfections.
Reeves describes his new-found emotional health:
At the moment my world caved in on me, when I had nothing
left, I discovered I didn't feel depressed, I felt free. I realized
that the most important thing was not, as I had imagined, to
survive or be successful; the most important thing was the
search for my soul, which I had left in the quicksand of my
childhood. When I found it, I learned that the power I had
wasted such desperate energy to gain had always been inside
me. I was reconciled with myself, I accepted myself with a
touch of kindness, and then, and only then, was rewarded with
my first glimpse of peace. I think that was the precise instant I
became aware of who I truly am, and at last felt in control of
my destiny. (381)
The key here, in terms of the text's feminist agenda, is that Reeves discovers
feeling is more important than power, and only with that acknowledgment,
can he reward himself with peace.
Allende's purpose in establishing her feminist theme is to expose
man's violence against women, to suggest that male sexual behavior is
controlling, perverse and destructive, perhaps inherently so but also as a
result of a patriarchal society. That Reeves can abandon that behavior and
experience life from a woman's perspective suggests that change is possible.
Other Allende critics have indicated that in Allende's novels in which two or
44
more narrators exist, the male and female voices reconcile.
Levine in "A
Passage to Androgyny" suggests that House of Spirits "is not only a mirror in
which tales are retold and female characters struggle against patriarchal
oppression; it is also a forum in which male and female are joined together in
a 'spirit of reconciliation with the sexes' " (165). While Reeves in The Infinite
Plan has reconciled with himself, he has done so only because he can free
himself from the barrio and from the sexual perversion and violence inherent
in a man's world. His ability to even accomplish this growth is dependent
upon a woman; his lover nurtures him and teaches him the value of feeling
and expressing feeling.
45
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
Despite the fact that The Infinite Plan has received little attention from
scholars and negative attention from the press, it presents itself as a
challenging novel for Allende scholars. Its narrative structure is complex and
is by far the most experimental structure that Allende has attempted.
Complexity in narrative structure exists in Allende's other works as well. The
House of Spirits has three narrators, the most important one of whom is Alba,
and The Stories of Eva Luna exists for and is dedicated to the storyteller's
lover, Rolf Carle, a character who exists in another of Allende's novels, Eva
Luna. While The Stories of Eva Luna and The House of Spirits present
complicated narrative structures, they do not approach the difficulty of the
number of layers of narrative voices in The Infinite Plan. Thus, even if the
novel strays from Allende's typical novel, it evidences her growth as a postmodern writer. Her novel demands that readers play an active role. Allende
requires her reader to pay attention and to perhaps re-read the novel in order
to follow the process of the narration. For example, Allende carefully
withholds the identity of the primary story teller until the end of the novel,
but upon re-reading, one finds clues of who she is. A careless reader might
disregard the complexity of the novel and merely toss it aside as being too
difficult. Perhaps the challenging structure of the novel, along with the
46
difference in setting and protagonist from Allende's other novels, makes it
too frustrating to be enjoyable to an avid reader of Allende. However,
serious Allende scholars should examine the novel again, particularly in light
of its experimental nature.
The Infinite Plan also evidences Allende's growth as a feminist, or at
least as a writer concerned about women. She holds true to her intention of
breaking the norms of patriarchal language. All of the narrative presences
support her feminist theme; these presences include a female omniscient
narrator, the feminist reality of the twentieth century, the paratext, and
Reeves' confessions to his psychiatrist and narrator. The female omniscient
narrator controls the novel and undermines the traditional power of a male
protagonist and male narrator. Both the narrative presences and the female
omniscient narrator guide Reeves on his journey of recovery. Ultimately,
Reeves recovers because he discards his sexist behavior, understands the
inherent perversion of male sexuality, and learns to value life from a female's
perspective. The success of Allende's complicated narration, particularly as
it presents its feminist theme, forgives the problems of the readability of the
text.
47
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