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Week 4: ‘The Shrouded Woman’
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The Shrouded Woman by María Luisa Bombal
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blog#4 – a Dead Woman existing in the 4D
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“The Shrouded Woman” by Maria Luisa Bombal
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"The Shrouded Woman"
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Bombal has invited us into the mind of her main character. Ana Maria is a woman who lived a long and tumultuous life. As she lays in her coffin, she has the time to think and reflect on all the highlights of her life and strings us along on a journey of happiness, pain, confusion and suffering. I never read or look up anything about a novel I’m about to read. This allows me maximum enjoyment of the piece and I also find it easier to read when I am slowly unpacking the events and perspectives of what I’m reading. Starting this novel, right away I was hooked! Being inside the mind of a corpse is certainly an interesting and rare perspective. I felt like right away I wanted to know more and understand Ana Maria. I didn’t just want to know about the things she experienced in her life or the people that made her life what it was. I also wanted to know how she felt that summer day she remembers so vividly in her coffin, how she felt when she got pregnant, when she lost the baby or when she saw the love of her life for the first time. Even though a lot of her thoughts are incomplete, that didn’t take away from the story telling. Because it didn’t feel like she was telling me (the reader) anything, she was merely thinking and recounting her life and I was given what felt like private access to her thoughts. She didn’t even know I was there. The reason I felt this way was because of how intimate her thoughts were. Especially when I realized that she could see and feel the things and people around her. She could see her children and husband coming to say goodbye to her. How repulsed she felt when Antonio came up to her to touch her and say goodbye to her. She hated it as she held so much resentment towards him, which wasn’t necessarily his fault. She only felt some empathy towards him when she was a wrinkle she hadn’t noticed before. It made her realize that he too was human, aging and eventually dying.
Ana Maria was a very emotional person throughout her life. She had a deep sense of connectedness to nature and her experiences often left a deep emotional impact on her. I’m going to end this post with a question about love that she herself posed that I thought was interesting to explore as well as a reflection of how she viewed her experiences with love: 'Is it that all those who were born to love acted like she did, hiding, minute by minute, what was most vital inside one’s self?'
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"The Shrouded Woman"
Posted by: feedwordpress
Bombal has invited us into the mind of her main character. Ana Maria is a woman who lived a long and tumultuous life. As she lays in her coffin, she has the time to think and reflect on all the highlights of her life and strings us along on a journey of happiness, pain, confusion and suffering. I never read or look up anything about a novel I’m about to read. This allows me maximum enjoyment of the piece and I also find it easier to read when I am slowly unpacking the events and perspectives of what I’m reading. Starting this novel, right away I was hooked! Being inside the mind of a corpse is certainly an interesting and rare perspective. I felt like right away I wanted to know more and understand Ana Maria. I didn’t just want to know about the things she experienced in her life or the people that made her life what it was. I also wanted to know how she felt that summer day she remembers so vividly in her coffin, how she felt when she got pregnant, when she lost the baby or when she saw the love of her life for the first time. Even though a lot of her thoughts are incomplete, that didn’t take away from the story telling. Because it didn’t feel like she was telling me (the reader) anything, she was merely thinking and recounting her life and I was given what felt like private access to her thoughts. She didn’t even know I was there. The reason I felt this way was because of how intimate her thoughts were. Especially when I realized that she could see and feel the things and people around her. She could see her children and husband coming to say goodbye to her. How repulsed she felt when Antonio came up to her to touch her and say goodbye to her. She hated it as she held so much resentment towards him, which wasn’t necessarily his fault. She only felt some empathy towards him when she was a wrinkle she hadn’t noticed before. It made her realize that he too was human, aging and eventually dying.
Ana Maria was a very emotional person throughout her life. She had a deep sense of connectedness to nature and her experiences often left a deep emotional impact on her. I’m going to end this post with a question about love that she herself posed that I thought was interesting to explore as well as a reflection of how she viewed her experiences with love: 'Is it that all those who were born to love acted like she did, hiding, minute by minute, what was most vital inside one’s self?'
read full post >>
"The Shrouded Woman"
Posted by: feedwordpress
Bombal has invited us into the mind of her main character. Ana Maria is a woman who lived a long and tumultuous life. As she lays in her coffin, she has the time to think and reflect on all the highlights of her life and strings us along on a journey of happiness, pain, confusion and suffering. I never read or look up anything about a novel I’m about to read. This allows me maximum enjoyment of the piece and I also find it easier to read when I am slowly unpacking the events and perspectives of what I’m reading. Starting this novel, right away I was hooked! Being inside the mind of a corpse is certainly an interesting and rare perspective. I felt like right away I wanted to know more and understand Ana Maria. I didn’t just want to know about the things she experienced in her life or the people that made her life what it was. I also wanted to know how she felt that summer day she remembers so vividly in her coffin, how she felt when she got pregnant, when she lost the baby or when she saw the love of her life for the first time. Even though a lot of her thoughts are incomplete, that didn’t take away from the story telling. Because it didn’t feel like she was telling me (the reader) anything, she was merely thinking and recounting her life and I was given what felt like private access to her thoughts. She didn’t even know I was there. The reason I felt this way was because of how intimate her thoughts were. Especially when I realized that she could see and feel the things and people around her. She could see her children and husband coming to say goodbye to her. How repulsed she felt when Antonio came up to her to touch her and say goodbye to her. She hated it as she held so much resentment towards him, which wasn’t necessarily his fault. She only felt some empathy towards him when she was a wrinkle she hadn’t noticed before. It made her realize that he too was human, aging and eventually dying.
Ana Maria was a very emotional person throughout her life. She had a deep sense of connectedness to nature and her experiences often left a deep emotional impact on her. I’m going to end this post with a question about love that she herself posed that I thought was interesting to explore as well as a reflection of how she viewed her experiences with love: 'Is it that all those who were born to love acted like she did, hiding, minute by minute, what was most vital inside one’s self?'
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The Shrouded Woman
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Thoughts on The Shrouded Woman
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The Shrouded Woman was my second reading for this class. Compared to our first reading Swann's Way, I found this novella not only easier to follow but far more capable of keeping me fully engaged as well. Before starting the reading, I can honestly say i was a bit worried that i might not understand it, or like it enough to read through it comfortably, but I can truly say I enjoyed reading it from beginning to end! This story is narrated by woman who had recently passed away. My guess is that it takes place at an open casket funeral. Ana Maria, or the shrouded woman, recounts key moments of her life while she lies dead. With each person that approaches her lifeless body, Ana Maria shares a detailed story on how they had impacted her life. She struggles to rest peacefully before facing these individuals and the hardships they caused her, one last time. Her stories involve life with her children and past lovers.
There were two key men/lovers that played a huge roll in the woman's life; Her first love, Ricardo, and Antonio, the man she ended up marrying. To summarize, her first love was passionate, fun and new until Ricardo was forced to leave her for his studies. A while after, she met and married Antonio, who at first she wasn't too crazy about at first but after spending time apart realized he was someone she loved (even though he was everything BUT an ideal husband). There are a few reasons why i can't help but feel sad for the shrouded woman. Probably the biggest reason being that she never got over her first love, despite marrying and having kids with a different man. She admits that "the love she thought was dead, had slept hidden," and even though she was devoted to her relationship with Antonio, years later she felt excitement to hear that Ricardo had split from his wife.
I imagine that being married to someone while still having deeply buried feelings for a past lover would be awful. However her relationship with Antonio made me equally as sad. I think the fact that this story was written and experienced by woman made it resonate with me even more. Not saying i have experienced marriage or a relationship the same as Ana maria, but i do think a lot of her experiences and emotions are relatable as a woman. Essentially, her entire relationship with Antonio was miserable. He was abusive and undeserving of the love Ana maria offered. She did nothing but try to please him, while all he did was tolerate her. This just resulted in a lifetime of anger and misery for the poor woman.
I realize this is getting extremely long, but I just wanted to mention one last thing that i found quite interesting about this text. There is quite an obsession with a woman named Maria Griselda. She is married to Ana Maria's son, Alberto. She's is essentially seen as the epitome of beauty and every man in this novel seems to be in love with her. She is seen as so desirable that one woman even takes her own life because her husband admits to writing letters to Maria. When the shrouded woman finally speaks with Maria, she essentially tells her that she was loved less, and had to to deal with more hardships in her life because she was that beautiful. The shrouded woman then feels pity for her. I may have read that part wrong so please correct me in the comments if i am haha. But i just wanted to throw this in here because I found their attitude toward jealousy very interesting. In todays society, you would never catch people being so openly envious of someone else. Furthermore if a woman ever expresses herself as Maria did to the shrouded woman, it would be seen as arrogance.
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