By both subverting and writing back against traditional patriarchal narratives regarding women's lives, Allende's characters utilize the power of words through speech and writing to construct portrayals of themselves and their experiences with their own voices. Isabel Allendes debut novel The House of the Spirits follows three generations of a Chilean family, focusing primarily on the lives of the grandmother. I also discuss the evolution of the characters' perceptions of their personal narrative within their familial narrative, and their familial narrative within the grand narrative of time. Through extensive close reading and analysis of Allende's text, I examine the individual and combined narratives constructed by these methods, and how the characters and author move within patriarchal limitations. This literary critical essay discusses the means through which Allende's characters, and Allende herself, create their own narratives: silence, speech, and writing. Reading the text, we feel as though were listening to a gifted and imaginative storyteller, following her through multiple digressions and repetitions and forgiving her occasional. Living under a controlling patriarch and an oppressive government, these women strive to reclaim and maintain their identities in a world that denies and rejects their agency and experiences. Allendes style in The House of the Spirits is, for the most part, very flowy and organic, as if she were telling the story orally. Isabel Allende's debut novel The House of the Spirits follows three generations of a Chilean family, focusing primarily on the lives of the grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter.
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