Academic literature on the topic 'Allende, Isabel – Characters – Women'

The proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa have once again foregrounded the trauma involved in reconstructing a past fraught with political and personal violence and have, at the same time, also illustrated the therapeutic quality of testimony. Literature has always played a vital role in the process of coming to terms with reality. As a woman within a postcolonial context, Isabel Allende bears witness to political oppression and gender discrimination in her novels. They serve as examples of testimonial literature which focus on the plight of women as marginalized citizens and represent a collective conscience in testimony to the atrocities of the past. This is accomplished through the interaction of her fictional characters with a recognizable historical context. In Of Love and Shadows, her female protagonist, Irene, asserts her individuality through writing/reporting which questions the validity of the male-oriented and so-called “objective” historical reportage. By creating disparate and complementary perspectives which accentuate the female/personal as well as the male/public aspects of experience, Allende proposes a recognition of the personal and the peripheral in the documentation of historical events; she underlines the validity of the “other” side of experience and history.

The aim of this article is twofold: firstly, to explore the picaresque elements present in Nadine Gordimer’s A Sport of Nature and secondly, to relate them to her more pronounced stance on feminism which has evolved since the 1980s. I suggest that an appropriate reading strategy would not only foreground these issues but also highlight A Sport of Nature as one of her most underrated novels. Following the example of the Latin American authors Isabel Allende and Elena Poniatowska, Cordimer has appropriated the picaresque tradition as an ideal vehicle to depict the elements of social critique and feminist assertion which characterize A Sport of Nature. The ironic retrospective stance on society, conventionally represented by a picaro as a social outcast, is reinforced by the introduction of a picara, thereby underlining the double marginalization of women as subjects and sexual objects. I propose that a feminist-oriented reading of the text which recognizes this subversive quality, would lend a different dimension to its interpretation. The character of Hillela serves as an implicit example of female ingenuity which attains political equality through devious means despite, and as a result of, the constraints of a hypocritical society and an entrenched patriarchal system. Seen from this perspective, the seemingly disparate elements of the novel coalesce to present a damning picture of contemporary society.

The United States of America serves as a unique site for the literary world of contesting cultures due to the immigrant writers whose spirit of quest pulled them to this terra firma, away from their homelands. These exiled writers reside in the US but their native lands remain the thematic concern of their works. This study critically explores and investigates fictional accounts of two contemporary diaspora authors, i.e. Isabel Allende and Bapsi Sidwa. These female authors from the third world countries present subversive female characters both in the diasporic setting of the United States and in their native locations. Sidwa and Allende create characters who resist the native patriarchal structures of the third world homelands and establish their individual identities in the first world metropolitan.

Abstract The following article is concerned with the analysis of the symbols of eagle and jaguar in the native cultures from the Amazon area, which, have inspired, among others, Chilean author Isabel Allende in her novel City of the Beasts. The animal motives become an integral part of the cultural tradition of the South American indigenous tribes that the author mentions. Legends and myths that the inhabitants of the rainforest keep to this day often describe the relation between person's life and the surrounding nature. In this respect, eagle and jaguar play an important role. From an anthropological point of view, the native peoples of the Amazon are closely tied with these animals. Their culture contains customs and rituals in which they imitate these worshipped animals. The aim of these rituals is to acquire animal hunting skills and strength. In literature, this connection can be even stronger. There are occasionally marriages between an eagle or jaguar and human characters, who live side by side. Such connection is not possible with other animals like sloths or monkeys. The reason for this is primarily the fact that only jaguars and eagles make living in a similar fashion to human characters of native myths. They hunt like people, eat what humans do and they share the same hunting grounds and habitat. In the novel, Isabel Allende refers to the jaguar and eagle as totem animals. They are symbols of profound connection between humans and nature. In the course of the story, the eagle and jaguar accompany the young heroes Alexander Cold and his friend Nadia on their initiation journey through the forest. At the end of the story, the young couple comes back to the civilization to convey the message of the indigenous people of Amazon, seeking an end of the bloodshed these tribes face.

This study analyzed Isabel Allendes novel The House of the Spirits by probing the correlation between fiction and history. The theory of New Historicism was used to examine the textuality of history and the historicity of the text. The study argues that Allendes novel can be read as a subversive text that problematizes the boundary between fiction and history. The novel was analyzed by creating a parallel between the fictional work i.e. The House of the Spirits and the history book i.e. The History of Chile to question the neutrality and objectivity of history. The appraisal incorporated the biographical, political, historical and cultural contexts to evaluate the characters, themes and events of the novel. The study analyzed Allendes novel in the backdrop of the texts historical, social and political circumstances. The findings of the study show that Allendes novel is a product of its time, locale, context and the novelists biography

Begun in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the feministic theory has manifested in a variety of disciplines including literature. The House of The Spirits written by the Chilean author Isabel Allende in 1982 depicts the struggle faced by women of different classes in different generations. Although the novel spans about fifty years of the life of Esteban Trueba, it is the women around him during distinct phases of his life that bring life to the novel. This study explores the patterns of women subjected to distress and misery because of the male subjects around them. The second wave of feminism which lasted roughly two decades finds itself in the vicinity of the movement. It is no secret that the writer wanted to portray the veracity of the society with revolutionary and conventional women. The work also portrays how women empower the spirits of others of their gender around them. This study challenges the belief that exceptional women who are constrained in their families because of their gender endure more grief till they become the best version of themselves.

<p><strong>La agencia femenina en la literatura ibérica y latinoamericana</strong></p><p>Autora: Elia Saneleuterio (ed.)</p><p>Editorial: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2020, ISBN: 978-84-9192-187-5, 346 pp.</p><p><strong>Resumen</strong></p><p><em>La agencia femenina en la literatura ibérica y latinoamericana</em> responde al interés científico y educativo de los estudios sobre obras literarias escritas o protagonizadas por mujeres en el ámbito español e hispanoamericano. El libro consta de veinte capítulos que abordan la caracterización de diversos caracteres femeninos en la literatura, su capacidad de elección y sus maneras de resistir en circunstancias adversas. Se seleccionan obras de todos los géneros sin excluir autoría masculina. Algunos de los autores y autoras analizados son Teresa de Cartagena, sor Juana, Pérez Galdós, Unamuno, De la Parra, Medina Onrubia, Laforet, Vitale, Martín Gaite, Matute, Aldecoa, Ferré, Allende, Porzecansky, Sierra i Fabra, Montes, Puértolas, Esquivel, Montero, Moscona, Carranza, Vallvey, Bollaín, Susana Vallejo, Baquero Cruz y Laura Gallego. </p><p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p><em>La agencia femenina en la literatura ibérica y latinoamericana</em> responds to the scientific and educational interest of studies on literary works written or carried out by women in the Spanish and Latin American sphere. The book consists of twenty chapters that address the characterization of various female characters in literature, their capacity for choice and their ways of resisting in adverse circumstances. Works of all genres are selected without excluding male authorship. Some of the authors analyzed in the volume are Teresa de Cartagena, Sor Juana, Pérez Galdós, Unamuno, De la Parra, Medina Onrubia, Laforet, Vitale, Martín Gaite, Matute, Aldecoa, Ferré, Allende, Porzecansky, Sierra i Fabra, Montes, Puértolas, Esquivel, Montero, Moscona, Carranza, Vallvey, Bollaín, Susana Vallejo, Baquero Cruz and Laura Gallego. </p>

"Food, like eroticism, starts with the eyes, but there are people who will put just about anything in their mouth" -- Isabel Allende (90) In the beginning is not the word, but the caress of the eye, the touch of the tongue and the taste of food. From the nipple onwards, the primary pleasure of food is part of a social eroticism -- a playful eroticism -- that prefigures and sets up the logic of speaking to and loving others. And it is this sensual and emotional potential of food as a source of power that has guaranteed a place for food in cultural media such as M/C. Food as eroticism is not food as sex. In "Beyond Food/Sex", Elspeth Probyn manoeuvres the reader around the conflation of food and sex and convinces us that we really are over food porn! She tantalises instead with the idea that the way to shake off constraining prohibitions and achieve greater susceptibility to pleasure is to think through food, to sex, the universe and everything... Thinking through our tongues reminds us of our shared corporeal vulnerability -- reminds us that we are bodies, connected to others, intuitively, materially and meaningfully. This is a politicisation of desire, a passionate advocacy of the impulse to give and receive pleasure with food. Of course, this impulse has always been exploited and distorted -- power says no as often as it says yes. Centuries of extravagant personal rivalry between élites while starving masses hungrily watch spectacles of waste have shown us that patriarchy is not the sole provenance of the misuse and abuse of food. Nations, groups and individuals define themselves by and through acts of consumption that are as much about exclusion, and creating otherness, as they are about inclusion. These twin themes of consumption and identity inform much of what is written about food today. Issues of identity -- both personal and national -- are held within a tension between have and have-not; inclusion and exclusion; self and Other. And frequently these binaries are articulated within the discourse of food and gastronomy: whether it is racial vilification based on the perception of cuisine stereotypes; or snobbery about the correct pronunciation of prosciutto or the ingredients for baba ghanoush. Even something as simple and necessary as cooking is commonly gendered in problematic and political ways. The articles in this issue of M/C all, to a greater or lesser extent, address these issues. Sydney academic Elspeth Probyn has long been interested in the problematics of identity and subjectivity, and in this issue's feature article, "The Indigestion of Identities", she suggests that a productive way of interrogating identity is through the lens of food, and those themes which append to eating. As she says, "eating continually interweaves individual needs, desires and aspirations within global economies of identities". Teemu Taira continues this theme in his discussion of unemployment in Finland, "Material Food, Spiritual Quest: When Pleasure Does Not Follow Purchase". His provocative view is that for the unemployed, the socialising role of work is replaced by food preparation and consumption, a social activity which is, paradoxically, jeopardised by the marginalisation and poverty which frequently coexists with unemployment. Construction of identity through food is also featured in "You Have a Basket for the Bread, Just Put the Bloody Chicken in It", Felicity Newman's reminiscence of growing up in a Jewish part of Sydney. Warm memories of fish and chips at Bondi lead Felicity to a discussion of ethnicity and race in contemporary Australian politics. According to Todd Holden in his investigation of portrayals of food on Japanese television, "And Now for the Main (Dis)course: Or, Food as Entrée in Contemporary Japanese Television", food is important because of the way it evokes a sense of nihonjinron -- that which is unique about Japanese culture -- and its ubiquity in everyday life. Food becomes a "common conduit" through which non-food issues can be understood. "Killer Zucchini", Ric Masten's witty and clever poem about gender politics, is framed around a description of that most phallic of vegetables, the zucchini. In a first for M/C, photographer Judith Villamayor presents a series of five images that evoke themes of food, sex and consumption. As described in the editors' introduction, "Chuck Another Steak on the Barbie, Would'ja Doll", all sorts of assumptions and beliefs about the gendering of food are played out in these confronting and original photographs. Lynn Houston, in her article "A Recipe for "Blackened 'Other': Process and Product in the Work of Victor Grippo", describes the work of the Argentinian artist who combines a fascination with food with other cultural issues, especially representations of the "Other". In "What About the Women? Food, Migration and Mythology", Danielle Gallegos and Felicity Newman use the stories of three women to provide a point of departure from the dominant discourse that suggests that migration and the increased mobility of Australians fills a culinary void left by a lack of affinity with the land and its produce. "Food Deserts: An Issue of Social Justice" is the descriptive title of Sinead Furey's, Heather McIlveen's, and Christopher Strugnell's article on the growth of "food shopping deserts" in parts of the United Kingdom. These are areas where the concentration of major supermarkets on the edges of towns have caused the closure of inner-city grocery stores, making access to food difficult for low-income families, who often do not have the advantage of private transport. Finally, issues of food and nationalism are brought together in Guy Redden's article, "Packaging the Gifts of Nation", in which he examines the packaging of certain food stuffs that construct a link between the food and idealised images of nature and nation. We want to thank Team M/C for their help in the planning and production of this issue of M/C, as well as our reviewers and all the authors who contributed to the journal. We especially want to thank Ian Van Wert who helped with translations from Spanish. Throughout the production we have scrupulously avoided the temptation to fall into obvious and regrettable food puns. Now, as the work is nearly done, we can afford the liberty of claiming one for ourselves: if this collection resembles a smorgasbord, we invite you to enjoy as much or as little of the offerings as you desire, but hope that all the dishes will provide satisfying food for thought. Bon appétit! Vikki Fraser, John Gunders -- 'Food' Issue Editors References Allende, Isabel. Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses. Sydney: Flamingo/HarperCollins, 1998. Probyn, Elspeth. "Beyond Food/Sex: Eating and an Ethics of Existence." Theory, Culture and Society 16.2 (1999): 215-28, 244. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Vikki Fraser, John Gunders. "Editorial: 'Food'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.7 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/edit.php>. Chicago style:M Vikki Fraser, John Gunders, "Editorial: 'Food'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 7 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/edit.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Vikki Fraser, John Gunders. (1999) Editorial: 'Food'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(7). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/edit.php> ([your date of access]).

In this study, we interpret Isabel Allende's La casa de los espiritus as a microcosm that portrays a patriarchal society. Our purpose is to study the underlying principles that support this patriarchal order and examine the mechanisms that perpetuate it and repress the potential for change. The objective is then to analyze the main female characters since they constitute a subversive presence which is constantly challenging the patriarchal order and which is potentially capable of transforming it. Our goal is also to demonstrate that the writing of the female characters undermine patriarchal discourse. Our final objective is to examine the novel in the context of two "histories": the consecrated male history which is deconstructed here and the extra-official or alternative one that tradition silences and that is represented here by the writing of the female characters.

This thesis focuses on a study of the female voice and silencing as well as on the use of the supernatural in selected works of literature from three different cultures: Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, and Toni Morrison's Beloved.

This thesis offers a typology of Postmodern women�s discourse from a sociological perspective. By focusing on the reading of Gioconda Belli�s Sofia de los presagios, Isabel Allende�s Paula, and Anacristina Rossi�s La loca de Gandoca, it examines how each writer achieves, thanks to the process of dialogism and the carnivalesque, a critique of social and aesthetic values, associated with Eurocentric discourse. Thanks to these two processes, the values associated with the marginalized position of women in Latin America, are brought to the surface, offering a better understanding of the relation that exists between women�s literary production and the cultural environment. Chapter one offers an overview of the concepts associated with Posmodernism, and its relevance in the Latin American context. This chapter also outlines the key concepts associated with dialogism and the carnivalesque. Chapter two examines the use of the carnivalesque in two plays by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Los empenos de una casa and Amor es mas laberinto as antecedents of subversive writing in Spanish American women�s writing. It discusses how Sor Juana through appropriation and inversion, transforms her texts into a critique of marginalized social groups. This chapter proposes that Sor Juana sets the model for the subversive nature of Spanish American women�s writing. Chapter three offers a reading of Cristina Peri Rossi�s El libro de mis primos as an example of radical feminist discourse produced in the 60�s, focusing on the use of parody and irony as means of transgressing patriarchal discourse. Chapter four examines Gioconda Belli�s Sofia de los presagios, and the incorporation of ancestral and modern myths, to accentuate women�s marginality and the conflicting and contradictory nature of Nicaraguan society. Chapter five focuses on a reading of Isabel Allende�s Paula in which the techniques of magical realism and the carnivalesque are brought together to criticize social and cultural practices that marginalize women. Chapter six examines Anacristina Rossi�s La loca de Gandoca. It focuses on the way Rossi makes use of popular music, romantic literature, poetry, and bureaucratic discourse, to denounce the exploitation and destruction of Costa Rica�s natural resources through ecotourism.

The mother-daughter relationship is dual, ambivalent, a hall of mirrors; it is at once the site of the womb and maternity, a veritable matrix of meaning. The mother-daughter pairing moves through the body, constantly calling attention to its origins and valorising a transmission au féminin even from within a patriarchal society. However, it can also prove catastrophic. Though the mother is the first person with whom the daughter identifies—her first link to life—the daughter not only reacts to her, but also pushes against her. It would appear that this confrontation is necessary, that it allows the child to detach herself from the mother even as she models herself on her. In order to avoid a destructive union, the daughter must become conscious of the maternal love from which she must take her distance if she is to become someone, and more precisely, a woman. In the novels analysed here, the daughter’s flight—her quest for independence from her mother—points to her need to create herself, to come into her own without destroying the mother-daughter bond. The notion of space is of the utmost importance in the discovery and (re-)establishment of this exclusive filial/maternal relationship. Space becomes the symbol of the mother and the antidote to filial solitude, a site of resistance, one to be conquered and understood, and thus an incentive to write the mother-daughter relationship. The symbolic matricide—depicted in these novels through the absence of the mother during the process of identification and the liberation of the daughter—ensures, a posteriori, the continuation rather than destruction of the filial/maternal relationship, as well as the affirmation of a female lineage. La relation mère-fille est duelle, ambivalente, jeu de miroirs. A la fois lieu de la matrice, lieu de maternage, et de matriçage. Le couple mère-fille en appelle en effet au corps, revenant à l’origine de cette relation qui valorise une transmission au féminin, et ce à l’intérieur-même d’une société patriarcale tendant à assujettir les femmes. Il peut toutefois aussi devenir désastre. La fille réagit face à sa mère, première personne à laquelle elle peut s’identifier, premier lien à la vie. La confrontation est, semble-t-il, nécessaire, elle permet à l’enfant de se détacher de la figure maternelle tout en s’en servant de modèle. Afin d’éviter une union destructrice, la fille doit prendre conscience d’un amour maternel envers lequel il faut qu’elle prenne ses distances de façon à être, à son tour, quelqu’un, et plus précisément une femme. La fuite des filles, ou du moins leur recherche d’indépendance face à leur mère dans les romans analysés indique cette nécessité de se construire soi-même sans pour autant détruire le lien à la mère. L’espace prend alors une place prépondérante dans la découverte et le rétablissement de cette relation maternelle exclusive. Il s’avère être symbole de la mère, antidote contre la solitude filiale, espace à conquérir et à comprendre, lieu de résistance, incitation à écrire cette relation mère-fille. Le meurtre symbolique de la mère, illustré ici par l’absence de celle-ci lors du processus d’identification et de libération de la fille assure a posteriori la persistance de la relation maternelle ainsi que l’affirmation d’une lignée féminine – et non leur anéantissement.
Thesis (Ph.D, French) -- Queen's University, 2013-04-18 17:21:29.738

碩士
臺灣大學
外國語文學研究所
95
The sexed ideology that women are designed for a life of cooking, caring, chores, and children maintains an intransigent position in the mindsets of the male characters in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits and Of Love and Shadows. Seemingly an unchanging characteristic of civilization, the work that women do in the home constitutes an aspect of patriarchal oppression. The dominant attitudes underpinning the sexual division of labor foreground a self-effacing image of femininity that divests women of social confidence. This thesis traces the author’s representations of women’s work in the home, hoping to gain understanding of the system of power that pressures women into the wife-mother role. In The House of the Spirits, the unyielding heroines actively contest the domestic work allocated to them, expunging from within the prevailing image of a meek homemaker. In light of how the repetitive and fatiguing nature of domestic labor suffocates creativity, it is no wonder that magic should find its way into the tenacious mothers and daughters that employ strategies to deal with household chores. In Of Love and Shadows, the daughters decide their own destinies by not modeling themselves after their mothers, who prize domestic services in exchange for male approbation. Drawing upon feminist criticism, I argue that the mothers and daughters in Allende’s two novels have enacted the dissolution of patriarchal control by wrestling with the oppression in the home.