Student Blogs

Please use categories (on WordPress) and/or tags (on WordPress and on Substack, labels on Blogger/Blogspot) when writing your blog posts. Use categories to indicate the author (Proust, Arlt, Piglia…), and tags for key concepts or topics covered (gender, postmodernism, truth…), or labels for both purposes on Blogger.

Remember also to include a question for discussion.

Check out the Blog Post Awards 2026 or the Blog Post Awards 2024 for further inspiration.


Week 4- Bombal’s “The Shrouded Woman”

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I found The Shrouded Woman to be an easier read compared to Paris Peasant and Combray. The writing was descriptive but not overflowing with a lot of vivid details. The scenes also didn’t feel like they suddenly changed without a reason either. It is also my favorite novel so far, though I do wish I […] read full post >>
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Maria Luisa Bombal, “The Shrouded Woman”

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The novel “The Shrouded Woman” by the Chilean female novelist Maria Luisa Bombal in 1947 is a fiction of femininity illustrated with the method of peripheral modernism. From death to burial, the South American middle-class woman Ana Maria is the narrator of the book, who could still see, hear and observe the people around her […] read full post >>
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María Luisa Bombal, The Shrouded Woman——Week4

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 This week I read The Shrouded Woman. The article begins with the perspective of a woman after her death. The narrator himself observes different reactions of people around her after her death and recalls the memories of her life. This part is composed. This kind of perspective of keeping one's acquaintances in the corpse is exciting, watching their attitude towards their own death, recalling their characters and making comments on the whole, giving people a sense of sobriety and rationality, as we all know, only we are not involved events, we can make an objective evaluation of them. And the death of the protagonist just happened to put her in this state.

Nothing can highlight the existence of consciousness itself more than consciousness after death. In the beginning, when the protagonist observes the environment with ideology, he is pulled away from reality. He becomes a bystander to himself, and when she begins to recall consciousness, It is like being re-immersed in the environment at that time. When the protagonist recalls her experience of falling in love, we can read the excitement, enthusiasm and shyness of the protagonist and the depression, sadness and depression when she is lost in love. However, although I can feel the protagonist's emotions, the process and details of the birth of these emotions are still very abrupt, as if the protagonist suddenly fell in love. And then this relationship ended so quickly, and the protagonist received a lot of damage; she kept going back and forth in pain and relief and vividly reflected the anxiety and anxiety in love. At the same time, the scenery and weather in the memories also change and show different atmospheres according to her mood, which complements the protagonist's feelings.

When reading this week's article, I feel that the author's description of feelings is more intense than the two previous works. When reading the author's recollections, there is a feeling of reading ordinary novels. She shows the story's development and the psychological and behavioural states of the different protagonists in it. And when she shows these stories, I feel that her self-consciousness is very weak, and she doesn't make it clear that the thinking of the characters in the story is her thinking.

So the question I want to ask this week is: Is the intensity of The Shrouded Woman's emotional expression somewhat more robust or weaker than the text in our previous course assignments?


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María Luisa Bombal, The Shrouded Woman——Week4

Posted by: feedwordpress

 This week I read The Shrouded Woman. The article begins with the perspective of a woman after her death. The narrator himself observes different reactions of people around her after her death and recalls the memories of her life. This part is composed. This kind of perspective of keeping one's acquaintances in the corpse is exciting, watching their attitude towards their own death, recalling their characters and making comments on the whole, giving people a sense of sobriety and rationality, as we all know, only we are not involved events, we can make an objective evaluation of them. And the death of the protagonist just happened to put her in this state.

Nothing can highlight the existence of consciousness itself more than consciousness after death. In the beginning, when the protagonist observes the environment with ideology, he is pulled away from reality. He becomes a bystander to himself, and when she begins to recall consciousness, It is like being re-immersed in the environment at that time. When the protagonist recalls her experience of falling in love, we can read the excitement, enthusiasm and shyness of the protagonist and the depression, sadness and depression when she is lost in love. However, although I can feel the protagonist's emotions, the process and details of the birth of these emotions are still very abrupt, as if the protagonist suddenly fell in love. And then this relationship ended so quickly, and the protagonist received a lot of damage; she kept going back and forth in pain and relief and vividly reflected the anxiety and anxiety in love. At the same time, the scenery and weather in the memories also change and show different atmospheres according to her mood, which complements the protagonist's feelings.

When reading this week's article, I feel that the author's description of feelings is more intense than the two previous works. When reading the author's recollections, there is a feeling of reading ordinary novels. She shows the story's development and the psychological and behavioural states of the different protagonists in it. And when she shows these stories, I feel that her self-consciousness is very weak, and she doesn't make it clear that the thinking of the characters in the story is her thinking.

So the question I want to ask this week is: Is the intensity of The Shrouded Woman's emotional expression somewhat more robust or weaker than the text in our previous course assignments?


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A reflection of Bombal’s ‘The Shrouded Woman’

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Before reading this novel, I couldn’t help but notice a handwritten note on the pdf version of the book provided to us by our Professor wherein on the title page, an anonymous individual wrote “Ana-Maria is a Femme Fatale.” Upon researching the unfamiliar term, I came to learn it refers to an attractive and seductive […] read full post >>
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Bombal- The Shrouded Woman W4

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Firstly, I must say I really enjoyed this read. It has probably been my favourite thus far. I found The Shrouded Woman to be very thought-provoking and interesting.  The overall feel of Bombal’s fictional world in The Shrouded Woman seems to me to be very gender-stereotypical and of course, patriarchal. The toll each of these […] read full post >>
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Week Four: Maria Luisa Bombal, The Shrouded Woman

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This book was a quick read. Overall,  it was concise and captivating. A few of the most prominent themes that stood out from this text are as follows: love, the value of women in terms of love, and the expectations that are placed on people based on the gender roles of society. 

Almost every single description or mention of any women in this text was somehow related to their physical appearance. It heavily focused on the idea that the value of a woman rests primarily on how beautiful they are according to the standards of society and in particular, the standards of the men in society. The men weighed their potential partners as candidates for becoming their wives and the mothers of their children based first and foremost on their attractiveness. There were a ton of details centered around skin, the colour and shape of their eyes, their hair, their grace and their bodies. I came away from this text with the feeling that while I didn't learn enough about the profound, substantial characteristics of the women in the story, I came away with very clear, detailed images of how they look on the outside. 

However, there was one character, Fernando, who stood out as I believe the only man (from what I can recall) who saw more than Ana Maria's appearance - he described her merits to be her intelligence, her sensitivity and her intuition. Even her husband Antonio, although he says that Ana Maria is the only woman he had ever truly loved, justifies his being crazy for many other women with the exclamation "Really, there are too many beautiful women running around in the world!" There was simply so much focus, importance and value pinned on beauty. 

Here is my final thought. All of this talk of love, heartbreak, relationships, betrayal - there has to be more to life than that, right? I think there has to be other things, hobbies and interests and more fascinating things to think about than the pain and complicated pleasures of navigating love. There wasn't a single easy going relationship in this entire text and as realistic as that is, in my opinion, it shouldn't be the main thing around which we force our thoughts and feelings to constantly revolve around. Aren't there other ways for us to find value in ourselves other than the one that our relationship gives us?

Here is my question for everyone. Do you believe that in today's society, there is just as much emphasis placed on the value of beauty? Are men and women today put through different standards than they were at the time this book was written?

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Week Four: Maria Luisa Bombal, The Shrouded Woman

Posted by: feedwordpress

This book was a quick read. Overall,  it was concise and captivating. A few of the most prominent themes that stood out from this text are as follows: love, the value of women in terms of love, and the expectations that are placed on people based on the gender roles of society. 

Almost every single description or mention of any women in this text was somehow related to their physical appearance. It heavily focused on the idea that the value of a woman rests primarily on how beautiful they are according to the standards of society and in particular, the standards of the men in society. The men weighed their potential partners as candidates for becoming their wives and the mothers of their children based first and foremost on their attractiveness. There were a ton of details centered around skin, the colour and shape of their eyes, their hair, their grace and their bodies. I came away from this text with the feeling that while I didn't learn enough about the profound, substantial characteristics of the women in the story, I came away with very clear, detailed images of how they look on the outside. 

However, there was one character, Fernando, who stood out as I believe the only man (from what I can recall) who saw more than Ana Maria's appearance - he described her merits to be her intelligence, her sensitivity and her intuition. Even her husband Antonio, although he says that Ana Maria is the only woman he had ever truly loved, justifies his being crazy for many other women with the exclamation "Really, there are too many beautiful women running around in the world!" There was simply so much focus, importance and value pinned on beauty. 

Here is my final thought. All of this talk of love, heartbreak, relationships, betrayal - there has to be more to life than that, right? I think there has to be other things, hobbies and interests and more fascinating things to think about than the pain and complicated pleasures of navigating love. There wasn't a single easy going relationship in this entire text and as realistic as that is, in my opinion, it shouldn't be the main thing around which we force our thoughts and feelings to constantly revolve around. Aren't there other ways for us to find value in ourselves other than the one that our relationship gives us?

Here is my question for everyone. Do you believe that in today's society, there is just as much emphasis placed on the value of beauty? Are men and women today put through different standards than they were at the time this book was written?

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Week 4 – Bombal

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First of all, this was the kind of book I envisioned reading when I enrolled in Romance studies. To answer the question in this week’s lecture video, the characteristics of this fictitious world of Bombal stand out to me as being patriarchal and unfulfilling. Ana-Maria, our dead narrator, reflects on the people who impacted her […] read full post >>
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Aragon “Paris Peasant”

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I was initially surprised to find out that this book was incredibly difficult to understand when I started reading it. In the process of reading this book, I kept on getting lost. I believe this may be due to the language used in the book and the main sentiment it is trying to convey. The […] read full post >>
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Hello world!

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Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging! read full post >>
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Hello! (Introduction)

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Hi all! My name is Sophia and I’m one of your classmates in RMST 202. I just joined this class so my intro post is late, but I’m excited to meet you all (although it’s a bit delayed). I am a second year student, ad I am planning on (but haven’t yet declared) a major […] read full post >>
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Hello world!

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Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging! read full post >>
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my thoughts on "Paris Peasant" by Louis Aragon

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 While reading "Paris Peasant" by Louis Aragon I was confused a lot of the time. I found it difficult to follow along with the text of the novel, as it did not seem to have much structure or storyline in my opinion. I also noticed that the beginning of the text was not very something that seemed to portray similarity to introductions of other texts that I have read in the past. I noticed that the beginning to this text was abrupt and I was confused initially at the structure of the introduction. That being said, I was able to notice that introduction or beginning of the text was quite meaningful and deep. The beginning of this text seemed to focus on life and its deeper meaning or at least that was the way that I had portrayed it. The text was very descriptive and it was slightly hard for me to follow along, but I was able to understand and interpret what was going on and how descriptive this novel was based on life. When the novel came to talking about certain buildings or places, I was pretty confused. I felt like I was not able to grasp on to the reasoning and the meaning behind the description of these places. My question about the text is what do we think makes the beginning of the novel seem so random or abrupt? During this novel, I had a hard time reading it due to the names of places being in another language. I found that I had more trouble understanding the storyline or flow of the text. I noticed that throughout this novel the author points out things in a way of including the reader in the text. This was interesting to me and helped me have an even deeper interest in the text. I wonder why the information about certain buildings or places is descriptive to the point where it talks about most fo the details you would find or observe when visiting any place. This was interesting to me as it makes me wonder what the purpose was behind the descriptiveness and if it leads to a deeper meaner or way of perceiving this text. I think that it is very interesting how descriptive this text is and I think that it adds beauty to this novel. I believe that this text allows readers to have a deeper level of understanding and meaningfulness. 

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my thoughts on "Paris Peasant" by Louis Aragon

Posted by: feedwordpress

 While reading "Paris Peasant" by Louis Aragon I was confused a lot of the time. I found it difficult to follow along with the text of the novel, as it did not seem to have much structure or storyline in my opinion. I also noticed that the beginning of the text was not very something that seemed to portray similarity to introductions of other texts that I have read in the past. I noticed that the beginning to this text was abrupt and I was confused initially at the structure of the introduction. That being said, I was able to notice that introduction or beginning of the text was quite meaningful and deep. The beginning of this text seemed to focus on life and its deeper meaning or at least that was the way that I had portrayed it. The text was very descriptive and it was slightly hard for me to follow along, but I was able to understand and interpret what was going on and how descriptive this novel was based on life. When the novel came to talking about certain buildings or places, I was pretty confused. I felt like I was not able to grasp on to the reasoning and the meaning behind the description of these places. My question about the text is what do we think makes the beginning of the novel seem so random or abrupt? During this novel, I had a hard time reading it due to the names of places being in another language. I found that I had more trouble understanding the storyline or flow of the text. I noticed that throughout this novel the author points out things in a way of including the reader in the text. This was interesting to me and helped me have an even deeper interest in the text. I wonder why the information about certain buildings or places is descriptive to the point where it talks about most fo the details you would find or observe when visiting any place. This was interesting to me as it makes me wonder what the purpose was behind the descriptiveness and if it leads to a deeper meaner or way of perceiving this text. I think that it is very interesting how descriptive this text is and I think that it adds beauty to this novel. I believe that this text allows readers to have a deeper level of understanding and meaningfulness. 

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