COPYRIGHT AND CITATION CONSIDERATIONS FOR THIS THESIS/ DISSERTATION o Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. o NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. o ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. How to cite this thesis Surname, Initial(s). (2012) Title of the thesis or dissertation. PhD. (Chemistry)/ M.Sc. (Physics)/ M.A. (Philosophy)/M.Com. (Finance) etc. [Unpublished]: University of Johannesburg. Retrieved from: https://ujdigispace.uj.ac.za (Accessed: Date). 'I sdi iian {Jni fI1 ft1[ T\ k1T 2&) 2002 -02- 19 2011 .-j 00 0 JII Ill I I HhIRAU BIB1 I MAGIC REALISM AND ISABEL ALLENDE: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN. NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE AND GENDER POLITICS BEVERLEY GOLDMAN Submitted in partial tultilrnent ot the requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS in ENGLISH in the FACULTY OF ARTS at the RAND AFRIKAANS UNIVERSITY Superi 'isor: Dr C. 11 ockett October 1995 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To Cecilv Lockett for hN v1s10n and percipience, mv gratitude and admiration; To my husband Dennis and our children, especially my daughter Nicki, whose faith in me was unwavering, r give this to you with love; To my mother, in warm and affectionate memory. II The main focus of study in this dissertation is the magic realism of Isabel Allende as it pertains to gender politics, specifically in the oppressive fascist regime of revolutionary Chile at the time at which her novels are set. Her narrative technique is identified and related to the environment of which she writes, with a view to associating it with the gender aspect of politics. The socio-political climate in Chile, certainly in the decades ot the 1960s and 1970s, incorporated elements of fascism, oppression and sexism: Allende successfully adapts most of her female characters to the revolution and its effects. Three of Allende's works are studied: Jbe House of the Sp_irits, Of Love and Shadows and Eva Luna. Vv'hile she has produced more writings than these, the three works chosen for analysis are the ones most suited to an examination of whether her works can be defined as feminist - which the first and third can - and whether her use of the technique of magic realism, specifically in the first and third novels, but not in the second, advances the cause ot, or is detrimental to, gender politics in Latin America. Definitions of magic realism and its positive and affirmative effects on feminism in The House of� and Eva I una are included., but always with the cognisance that the perspective and the practice of tenunismin Latin r-\m.erica differ markedly from that in North America. 1l1e section dealing with Qf �fill.d_Sba..do� concentrates on social realism and concludes that as a technique for feminist fiction, it is less successful than that of magic realis1n both in its representation and in its depiction of feminism. Allende posits female bonding between mother and daughter ,md in the wider universal sense as the basis for female strength and as the solution to the heinous evils perpetrated by the dominant male patriarchy. Ill CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ............................................................................................. iii CONTENTS ........................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION: MAGIC REALISM, GENDER POLITICS AND TI-fE WRITINGS OF ISABEL ALLENDE ............................................................... 1 CHAPTER I : THE HOUSE OF SPIRlTS ...................................................... 14 CHAPTER II: OF LOVE AND SHADOWS .................................................. 37 CHAPTER Ill: EVA LUNA ..................................................................... 55 CHAPTER IV : CONCLUSION ................................................................. 72 BIBLIOCRAPI-lY ..................................................................................... 76 IV lNIRODUCTION: MAGlC REALISM.. GE.ND.EJLEillJTI AND IHE WRIIINGSQF {SABET. AI.I.ENDE I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience, and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. (James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.) All thy threads with magic art Have wound themselves about this heart. (William Cowper: TuMary. ) The literary term "magic realism" defines a category of fiction different from traditional naturalistic and realistic fiction, and from categories of fantastic writing which include fairy-tales, ghost stories and the gothic novel. The currency of this term is attributable in part to its continued use by the 1982 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, though he was not the originator of the genre. From the early decades of the twentieth-century other Latin-American male authors adopted and employed this technique, among them Julio Cortazar, Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Borges, Juan Arreola and Miguel Asturias. [n her analysis of their juxtaposition of the real and the supernatural, Patricia Hart has concluded that magic realism is ''based on a vital conflict between idealism and pragmatic reality' (1987: 21). It is only now, however, in the last two decades ot this century, as women writers strive for and receive some 1 recognition on the continent, that they are appropriating this narrative technique and altering it to analogise with the growing awareness and acceptance of feminist writing. A working definition of magic realism, and the one most often used as a point of reference for this particular genre, is offered by Amaryll Chanady (1985: 8), for whori its tenacity and power to endure have eluded those prophesving its impending demise. Magic realism for Chanady is otten defined as the juxtaposition of two different nationalities - the [South American] Indian and the European - in a svncretic tictitious world-view based on the simultaneous existence •ot several entirely different cultures in Latin America. The definitive Latin-American writers, both male and female, have taken cognisance of and perfected the art of magic realism: in their hands it has become an accepted and viable literary form. Its basis is 'actuality': retlecting something that once actually happened, it may then distort the happening in a fantastic observation. Anything that is believable may be included; and the many and varied techniques of the language used describe as most human that which is most marvellous. It encompasses historical, social, mythical, collective and individual reality: within its parameters the presaging of events otten replaces the objectivity of reality, and reality then becomes what is passed on in the narrative. Ilmaginative and inventive writing, and the blurring of boundaries between being and reality, share space with historical fabrication, with 'Bihlical myths, timeless myths and pagan allusions at the service of the narrative" (Chanadv 44). In order to be understood fully, the lyrical character of magic realism must he recognised, for it imprints upon the subject a heightened sense of reality as it combines realistic and tantastic Ii terature. In magic realist novels there is a departure from the traditional and conventional categories of realism or romance. In their place the author 2 experiments with form, style, factors of time and subject matter. The commonplace, the mythical and the fantastic are fused in works that, while eminently believable, obscure the distinctions between what is trivial and comic with what is serious and tragic. Jatin-American prose fiction, according to Payne & Fitz (1993: xi), developed, as its centrepiece the enshrinement of ambiguity, a growing awareness that 'reality' is at least as niuch a fluid construct as it is a physical or socio-political entity to he imitated or reproduced ... It represents a realisation that at any given moment 'reality' is multi-dimensional and that language ... is volatile because it is itself inherently ambiguous. When Latin-American literature began as a definitive movement in the early part of the century, there was inherent in this movement an acceptance of the "Amerindian concept of life which, when merged with the concerns of the new novel, developed into ... Magical Realism" (Brunton 1990: 16). Latin- American novels have almost always striven to use fiction as a means to social change or political reform. Patricia Hart (1987: 12) translates magic realism as a phrase in which, a fascinating conflict of both terms and literary traditions exists, with the attempt to truthfully mirror the workings of a quotidian world vying with an idealistic desire to use literature for change, or to find in it something that transcends the banal and the mundane. Fantasy literature, says Rosanne Brunton (1991:1), opposes the tenets of realism by seeking to articulate that which is incomprehensible in rational terms ... Because it does not ground itself in the realistic, the fantastic defies the constraints of signification, floating freely as an expression of the human potential to create ... The fantastic ... is ideally suited to women's writing, for it nullifies hierarchical structures that reduce or threaten women's writing.