RE-IMAGINING THE FAMILY IN THE SELECT NOVELS
OF ISABEL ALLENDE
Dr. P. Sarojini
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Sona College of Arts and Science
Salem, Tamil Nadu.
Abstract:
Since male dominance can never be justified, feminists
in Latin America claim that there can never be a "positive macho man"
and that they reject cultural norms. They contend that patriarchal traditions
cause women to be treated as property. The trilogy by Isabel Allende, including
Daughter of Fortune, Portrait in Sepia, and The House of the Spirits, is the
subject of the current study work. The trilogy shows the tyranny and dominance
that women experience in patriarchal households as well as the strategies used
to combat it. She challenges the conventional notion of the family and
challenges the idea of the family as a homogeneous entity while highlighting
the diversity of experiences. This article investigates how Allende
re-imagines the traditional family by providing an unconventional representation
of the ordinary family with the help of the Family System Theory.
Keywords: Male Domination,
Oppression of Women, Family System Theory, Patriarchal Strategies.
Introduction:
Feminists in Latin America reject cultural
norms and insist that there can be no such thing as a “positive macho man”
since male domination can ever be justified. They argue that patriarchal norms engrain
some ideals, which result in women’s enslavement and the consequent suppression
of their voice. According to Lucero-liu and Christensen “the stereotypes of the
good woman and the macho man may have many consequences on the Chicano
population, including influences on sexual behaviour and sexual practices, labour
force participation, educational values and behaviour, sexual identity, family
violence and sexual and alcohol abuse” (102).
According to modern sociologists, familism is
a key component of Latin American households. According to Maxine Baca Zinn, families
can be classified in four different ways: by their size, by the strength of
their ties to one another, by whether they are extended or intergenerational,
and by how they interact. The family of Isabel Allende follows the familism
philosophy due to their enormous size and emphasis on intergenerational ties.
The work of family sociologists like Safilios-Rothschild, Bernard, Lopata,
Peters, and Massey gave rise to feminist family studies. The theoretical and
methodological framework adopted by academics studying feminist families is
outlined in The Handbook of Feminist Family Studies by Sally A. Lloyd et al.
According to them:
Collectively, their strategies included the following: a)
exposing the patriarchal bias in presumptions about men, women and children in
diverse families; b) asking previously unasked (and unaskable) questions about
invisible family processes and structures; c) adding participant centric
research methods that invited participants voices to be heard; and d)
contributing new knowledge about the lived experience of individual and family
lives that mattered to both participants and researchers (and continue to
matter today).(7)
Each family
member is required to uphold certain standards and fulfill a particular role.
Relationship agreements outline the appropriate interactions between system
members based on their respective roles. Patterns develop within the framework
of the system as one family member's actions predictably influence and are
caused by those of other family members. A family can experience both balance
and disorder as a result of continuing the same behavioural pattern. For
instance, if the husband is despondent and unable to get himself together, the
wife may need to assume more responsibility. Similarly, man should assume
a woman's obligations whenever she finds it tough to complete her tasks. The
family is brought into harmony by this balance. However, majority of men refuse
to acknowledge the importance of having female family members in their homes.
Oppression of Women:
Discrimination against women has always
thrived in the home. A woman's identity is shaped by her mothering
responsibilities, and her domestic responsibilities shape her work. The
importance of women as family members and the equality of their desires and
aspirations with those of men are stressed in feminist family studies. Maggie
Humm affirms that, “One of the most valuable achievements of feminist theory
has been its effort to deconstruct the family as a natural unity and to
reconstruct it as a social unit - as ideology, as an institutional nexus of
social and cultural meanings and relations” (87).
The trilogy by Isabel Allende, including
Daughter of Fortune, Portrait in Sepia, and The House of the Spirits, is the
subject of the current research paper. The trilogy shows the tyranny and
dominance that women experience in patriarchal households as well as the
strategies used to combat it. She challenges the conventional notion of the
family and challenges the idea of the family as a homogeneous entity while
highlighting the diversity of experiences. This article investigates how
Allende re-imagines the traditional family by providing an unconventional
representation of the ordinary family with the help of the Family System
Theory. According to Bowen, a person's family unit or family centre as a whole
still has a significant influence on their emotions and behaviour. All families
have some degree of interconnectedness among the family members, even if the
degree of interdependence can vary between various families depending on how
their family emotion system functions, their particular family centre, or their
human relationship systems. According to the Bowen’s family system theory,
interdependence becomes emotionally draining when a person experiences
significant levels of stress since their anxiety may extend to other family members or the family unit as a whole. Thus, the
subjugated women have high stress and this will affect the entire harmony of
the family.
Allende examines normal family structures and
interactions in her trilogy. Her works frequently deal with orphans and adopted
children, interclass couples, and interracial couples. Allende emphasizes each
person's self-discovery while downplaying the importance of the conventional
family structure by showing atypical familial interactions. The protagonist of
each of Isabel Allende's books begins on a cliffhanger, not knowing where she
came from. In the end, the protagonists' shattered family and mysterious past
drive them to uncover their roots, which changes the family's dynamic and
redefines their identity. In the process of self-discovery, people identify the
special talents and skills that enable them to function in their own
patriarchal societies.
Family Structure Analysis in Daughter of Fortune:
Daughter of Fortune's main character, Eliza
Sommers, was raised with a strong feeling of self-importance. Her upbringing by
a brother-and-sister team only heightens the mystery surrounding her. She was
informed as a little girl that she had two birth narratives. She is descended
from an English ancestor, claims Sommers. According to Rose Sommers'
information, “The basket they had found at the office door was woven of the
finest wicker and lined in batiste; Eliza’s nightgown was worked with French
knots and the sheets edged with Brussels lace, and topping everything was a
mink coverlet, an extravagance never seen in Chile” (DOF4). Mama Fresia argued that
she wasn't English because she had Indian black hair. She believed, however, “you
were shivering and bundled upinaman’s sweater. They hadn’t even put a diaper on
you, and you were covered with your own caca. Your nose was running and you
were red as a boiled lobster, with a head full of fuzz like corn silk. That’s
how itwas” (DOF5). Although it had been kept a secret, both Rose
and Mama Fresia affirmed that she was born on March 15, 1832. She had to make
up a story to explain how she came to be and how she was raised.
Eliza persuaded herself that she was a
shipwrecked child and not the offspring of an unnatural mother who would have
abandoned her and left her out in the elements on a March day. In her diary,
she described how a fisherman discovered her on the sand among the wreckage of
a beached ship, wrapped her in his jumper and left her at the most opulent
residence in the English colony. She is thus successful in forging an identity
for herself that enables her to endure suffering.
She eventually had the confidence to move to
California with her lover in search of a family she could create for herself as
a result of her mysterious childhood and strange family. She also made the
decision to leave everything behind and begin a new life because she was
concerned for the safety of her own child. Eliza's family's reputation was
tarnished as a result of her illegitimate pregnancy. She became aware that she
had signed the moral line. She therefore believed that “If she fled, the family
reputation would be stained, but at least they would have the benefit of the
doubt: they could always say she had died. Whatever story the Sommers offered
the world, she wouldn’t have to watch them suffer the shame” (DOF 152). So, she embarked on an
expedition while going aboard the ship illegally in order to locate her lover
and start a family for herself. She was becoming more and more enmeshed in the
strange hallucination that would define her existence for the ensuing few
months with each step she took on her quest. She felt strong, as if she were
the protagonist and narrator of a completely new story.
Eliza was able to overcome the limitations
and social expectations that come with being a woman after relocating to
California. She had never before felt as though she was totally invisible to
the rest of the world, as if she were dressed more like a man than a lady. She
is no longer restricted by the tightness of her petticoats, so she can breathe
normally. As a Chilean woman,
Fear had been her companion: fear of God and his
unpredictable justice, of authority; of her adoptive parents, of illness and
evil tongues, of anything unknown or different; fear of leaving the protection
of her home and facing the dangers outside; fear of her own fragility as a
woman, of dishonour and truth. (DOF275)
She gained self-assurance, learned to welcome each day as
it arrived, and realised the underlying strength she had always possessed. She
was able to let go of the guilt and shame she had experienced following her
exile. She described how limited she felt as a result of being pregnant. She
experienced a sense of freedom and oneness with the environment as she rode
through California's golden landscape. She and her companion had no regrets
about what they had said or done, and they were not ashamed of the fires that
had changed their lives. Instead, she believed that they had made her stronger,
more mature, and given her a sense of pride for having made decisions and paid
the price that went along with them.
She fell in love with her own life in
California. She feels comfortable when she is dressed in her man's clothes.
Eliza was able to shed her guilt by writing, which allowed her to find
independence and give herself a true identity. This is evident through the
following words of Eliza “This land is a blank page; here I can start life anew
and become the person I want. No one knows me but you; no one knows my past; I
can be born again” (DOF280).
Analysis on Portrait in Sepia:
The main character in Portrait in Sepia,
Aurora Del Valle, was raised in two different cultures without ever discovering
her true ancestry. Despite the fact that she is referred to as both Aurora and
Lai Ming, there is only one picture of her when she was a baby and several
pictures of her mother. Because her mother passed away during childbirth and
her father wouldn't speak to her, she was raised by her maternal grandparents
in Chinatown until she was five. The paternal grandmother of Tao Chien, Paulina
Del Valle, was given care of her after Tao Chien's maternal grandma, Eliza
Sommers, removed any traces of her past. Aurora was even more confused because
her uncle Severo Del Valle had adopted her. She's back where she started when
it comes to discovering her origins. In the event that Paulina's parentage was
ever questioned, she would always respond, “they were dead and that it was all
right because having a grandmother like her was more than enough” (PIS 136). When she asked Eliza the same
question later in the storey, she answered, “Who conceived you is not really
important, Lai Ming; anyone could do that. Severo is the one who gave you his
name and took responsibility for you” (PIS
283). Because of all this uncertainty, she kept having dreams about kids in
black pajamas. She uses writing to express herself:
Because of my dreams, I am different, like people who
because of a genetic illness or some deformity have to make a constant effort
to live a normal life. They bear visible signs; mine can’t be seen, but it
exists. I can compare it to attacks of epilepsy, which come on suddenly and leave
a wake of confusion behind. I am aft-aid to go to bed at night; I don’t know
what will happen while I’m sleeping, or how I will wake up”. (PIS
95-96)
She discovers her hidden photographic talent as a result,
becoming an expert in the language of body, gesture, and stare. She eventually
utilised her photos to help her unravel the riddle of her husband's adultery.
Aurora eventually mustered the courage to
divorce her husband and pursue her goals. She was bold enough to begin a new
relationship and defy convention by choosing not to be married after a failure
in her marriage. She says in her memoir, “The advantage of being lovers is that
we have to work hard at our relationship, because everything conspires to drive
us apart. Our decision to be together has to be renewed again and again; that
keeps us on our toes” (PIS 288). As a
result, Aurora is writing her memoir at the beginning of the story in the hopes
that it would give her life meaning. It is clear through the following lines:
I can say I have a good life. I have the means and the
freedom to do what I want; I candevotemyselffullytotravellingthelengthofChile’sabruptgeographywithmycameraaround
my neck, … People talk behind my back, it’s inevitable; they cannot tolerate a
woman who left her husband. Those slights do not keep me awake; I don’t have to
please everyone, only those who truly matter to me, and they are not many. (PIS 276-277)
Alba was raised by her mother Blanca in the
home of her maternal grandparents in The House of the Spirits. On her birth
certificate, her stepfather's last name was stated as Satigny. Her father had
always been described to her as an aristocrat who died of a fever in the
northern desert. When Alba was tasked with finding the body of her father's
killer, she was at last forced to face the realisation of her true paternity
after many years. She became aware of how much of her father Pedro Tercero's
rebellious personality had been inherited by her. Alba was able to forge a
strong feeling of self-determination thanks to her singular upbringing and
participation in the nation’s political and civil freedom movements. After
escaping every horrific violence and rape she encountered in the novel, Alba
went on to play a significant role in the country's class struggle and political
crises. She reclaims her history as the book's narrator by reading her
grandmother's journals and her grandfather's tales. In Allende's
representations of family, women are given certain talents that help them build
their own self-identities in the patriarchal society.
In her trilogy, she creates mother-centric
homes where the mother serves as a caring, protective, and educator. In the
trilogy, women dominate the plot and the action. The only male character in the
trilogy that survives the heroic women of her family at the end is Esteban
Trueba. Women of different generations who profoundly influence one another
comfortably defy traditional family ideals and practices. Tess Cosslett defines
a “matrilineal narrative as one which either tells the stories of several
generations of women at once or which shows how identity of a central character
is crucially formed by her female ancestors” (7). The trilogy contains a number
of legacy and intergenerational relationships, making it clear that the story
is matrilineal.
Family systems theory (Kerr and Bowen, 1988)
is a theory of human behavior that defines
the family unit as a complex social system, in which members interact to
influence each other's behavior. Family members interconnect allowing to view
the system as a whole rather than as individual elements. (Capuzziand Stauffer
151)
Conclusion:
The situation of women in the family system
as shown by Allende in the books under consideration is examined in the paper.
The majority of women experience gender discrimination inside their own
families, particularly after marriage. Maintaining the balance of the family
becomes a monumental task for them. Through her books, Isabel Allende
encourages women not to give up when they encounter difficult circumstances. Women
need to rise up in opposition to patriarchal household standards and resist
their repression. Thus, Allende's female heroines face their problems and
struggle for identity. Family Systems Theory emphasises relationships inside
families as well as the circumstances in which they exist in order to
understand human behaviour. The Family Systems Theory has drawn on a variety of
disciplines, including psychotherapy and family therapy.
Every member of the family should be able to
express their ideas and discuss any and all difficulties with the others. The
family then works together to come up with a solution to lessen both the
individual's and the family's overall stress. According to the family system
theory, all issues should be discussed openly inside the family. The male
protagonists in Allende's books demonstrate that these guys are not yet
equipped to relate to or empathise with their feminine counterparts. They treat
them unfairly and aren't even willing to acknowledge that they are feeling,
emotional people who are genuinely an integral part of the family. Therefore,
the current study article concludes that the characters Alba, Clara, Eva Luna,
Eliza, Blanca, Consuelo, Evangeline, and Irene would have been able to escape
their predicaments if they had had open dialogues with their family or the
relevant parties. However, not all family members are given the same amount of
space for conversation.
Allende contends that women must raise their
voices in protest in order to free themselves from their restraints. She sees
the family as one cohesive unit. In contrast to traditional family systems, it
should encourage diversity of experiences and help resolve issues of gender
inequality amicably. The research article examines how Allende re-imagines the
traditional family by providing an unconventional representation of the average
family with the help of the Family System Theory. The silent women enmeshed in
the family system have powerful voices thanks to Allende's works in a dramatic
and profound way. These protesting voices of her characters insist on the
effects of a re-imagined family that creates equilibrium and harmony
inside the new Family.
Works Cited
Allende, Isabel. Daughter
of Fortune: A Novel. Harper Via, an Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers,
200.
---. Portrait in
Sepia: A Novel. Harper Via, an Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, 2020.
---. The
House of the Spirit. Corgi Books,1993.
Baber, Kristine M., and Katherine R. Allen. Women and Families: Feminist Reconstructions.
Guilford Press,1992.
Capuzzi, David, and Mark D. Stauffer. Foundations of Couples, Marriage, and Family
Counseling. JohnWiley& Sons, 2021.
Exploring
Intersections in the Intimate Lives of Mexican...repository.arizona.edu/arizona/bitstream/10150/193900/1/azu_etd_2156_sip1_m.pdf.
Humm, Maggie. The
Sufferings of Women. Hubel Press,2010.
Lloyd, Sally A., etal. Handbook of Feminist Family Studies. Sage,2009.
Tess Cosslett, “Feminism, Matrilinealism, and
the ‘House of Women’ in Contemporary Women’s Ficton,” Journal of Gender Studies. 5.1. 1996.