I really enjoyed this week’s novel of The Shrouded Woman. I was looking forward to this week’s novel since it is the first one with a female author and I was intrigued if there was a noticeable difference between the previous books. One thing I noticed was a difference through the characters as the women …
Continue reading “The Shrouded Woman by María Luisa Bombal”
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First of all, the concept of a deceased person just summarizing her life is an amazing concept. Makes you really wonder what life after death really is like. This book was a wild ride. but every moment of it was special and so vivid. It may be fiction, but the world that was created felt […]
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blog#4 – a Dead Woman existing in the 4D Life is a crueler fate than Death. That’s the thought that rattled in my head for the entire reading of Bombal’s ‘The Shrouded Woman’. Though many other attributes of the story become abundantly clear, the atmosphere of Death and Envy was subtle, yet, overwhelming. The addition […]
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I have not gotten lost in a book for a long time and this novel gave me just that feeling…
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After reading Bombal’s “the shrouded woman” I am left with many thoughts about life and the many intersecting joys and miseries one experiences in it. This is likely an intended thought process, as the peculiar method of narration, where a disembodied voice describes protagonist Anna-Maria’s post-mortem journey through memory, subsequently switching to her first person […]
Posted in Blogs, Bombal | Tagged with circumstance, context, emotion, passion
I’m not sure that I “enjoyed” The Shrouded Woman, as I found it to be quite sad; however, it certainly struck me as unique, and it made me consider gender and society from a perspective that I wouldn’t normally entertain: the perspective of a woman who has not only “lost,” but died. When I describe Ana Maria […]
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The Shrouded Woman was one of the more enjoyable texts I have read so far in this course. I loved the concept of Ana María being dead and describing her connections to those surrounding her. I thought the point of view of a woman’s contemplations of her experiences was a unique perspective that I have never come across but was pleased with how it was carried out. Us readers got to take a trip with Ana María as she reflected on life through her different relationships and the way she lived her life. It was refreshing to see a novella depict women in a positive light with their individuality intact. Still, they revolve their lives around a man’s and were always comparing themselves with the other women.
It was hard to see the protagonist’s relationships fail over and over. Ana María never got over her first love Ricardo and we saw the ways it affected her life from that point forward. All the men in her life were a cause of pain. In each relationship she had, she was forced to change a bit about herself to fit better with men, no matter what negative effect it had in her life. “Are all those born to love compelled to drift toward self-destruction, to smother minute after minute within themselves all that is most vital in their own wellbeing? Because of you I suffer from a wound continually reopening” (pg 227). I found this part to be really impactful as it remains a true experience for many women. Also on this page, she mentions having to behave a certain way around the men she loved and suppress her affection towards them if she wanted to continue to receive the “restricted love of others.” Throughout her life, Ana María had to change pieces of herself to gain the love of men but was never fully satisfied from that affection which led her to be stuck in a cycle of unhappiness. In terms of this passage, my question to the class is: Can one ever be happy in a relationship where they have to change who they are to receive love? Or will it end in misery every time?
Overall I thought the novella was an interesting read. I loved how we were able to see Ana María’s after-life reflections on her life and how it was affected by the men she loved.
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The Shrouded Woman was one of the more enjoyable texts I have read so far in this course. I loved the concept of Ana María being dead and describing her connections to those surrounding her. I thought the point of view of a woman’s contemplations of her experiences was a unique perspective that I have never come across but was pleased with how it was carried out. Us readers got to take a trip with Ana María as she reflected on life through her different relationships and the way she lived her life. It was refreshing to see a novella depict women in a positive light with their individuality intact. Still, they revolve their lives around a man’s and were always comparing themselves with the other women.
It was hard to see the protagonist’s relationships fail over and over. Ana María never got over her first love Ricardo and we saw the ways it affected her life from that point forward. All the men in her life were a cause of pain. In each relationship she had, she was forced to change a bit about herself to fit better with men, no matter what negative effect it had in her life. “Are all those born to love compelled to drift toward self-destruction, to smother minute after minute within themselves all that is most vital in their own wellbeing? Because of you I suffer from a wound continually reopening” (pg 227). I found this part to be really impactful as it remains a true experience for many women. Also on this page, she mentions having to behave a certain way around the men she loved and suppress her affection towards them if she wanted to continue to receive the “restricted love of others.” Throughout her life, Ana María had to change pieces of herself to gain the love of men but was never fully satisfied from that affection which led her to be stuck in a cycle of unhappiness. In terms of this passage, my question to the class is: Can one ever be happy in a relationship where they have to change who they are to receive love? Or will it end in misery every time?
Overall I thought the novella was an interesting read. I loved how we were able to see Ana María’s after-life reflections on her life and how it was affected by the men she loved.
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