The House of the Spirits

“Silence filled her utterly. She did not speak again until nine years later, when she opened her mouth to announce that she was planning to be married.”

Clara falls into a spell of muteness upon witnessing Rosa’s autopsy. This voluntary period of silence is the longest one she undertakes, but not the last; at different points in her life, Clara seeks out silence to conserve energy or reclaim power.

“What you need here is a strong government, with a strong man. It would be lovely if we were all created equal, but the fact is we’re not. It couldn’t be more obvious. The only one who knows how to work around here is me, and I defy you to prove otherwise.”

Esteban asserts these beliefs to his foreman, Pedro Segundo, when the latter suggests that Esteban give his tenants more respect and independence. Esteban’s belief that a certain social order or hierarchy is innate naturally translates into a patriarchal outlook, as well as his alignment with right-wing politics later in the story. His view on the need for strong men and governments also aligns with his eventual support of the military coup to take back power from the leftist government.

“‘I’m only sorry that I won’t be seeing you again, Tránsito. I’ve grown accustomed to you.’ 

Tránsito Soto rightly predicts that Esteban and she will meet again, despite her leaving for the capital. Her assertion that life is long and contains unexpected turns holds true for the larger story—as it unfolds, multiple unexpected connections, parallels, events, and consequences emerge. Tránsito Soto and Esteban themselves cross paths again multiple times, under varying and unexpected circumstances.

“She filled innumerable notebooks with her private observations, recording the events of those years, thanks to which they were not erased by the mists of forgetfulness and I can now use them to reclaim her memory."

Clara records the stories Nívea told her, as well as the various events of her own life, and Alba uses these notebooks years later to piece together the whole story. The practice of writing, recording, and communicating stories is an important one within the del Valle family, especially for the women. The tradition helps successive generations of mothers and daughters form close bonds with each other and later becomes instrumental in keeping Alba alive.

“It was a world in which time was not marked by calendars or watches and objects had a life of their own, in which apparitions sat at the table and conversed with human beings, the past and the future formed part of a single unit, and the reality of the present was a kaleidoscope of jumbled mirrors where everything and anything could happen. It is a delight for me to read her notebooks from those years, which describe a magic world that no longer exists.”

The book draws on the style of magical realism, a genre commonly employed in Latin American writing (most famously by Gabriel García Márquez). Elements of fantasy blurring the edges of reality are present throughout the book, and Clara embodies this magic most vividly as a character. Alba describes the magical world her grandmother inhabited, as preserved in Clara’s notebooks; while this kind of world does not exist anymore, the possibility of things having been so is never questioned, in keeping with the conventions of magical realism.

“[…] I had come to understand that silence was my wife’s last refuge, not a mental illness as Dr. Cuevas said it was.”

Clara has another spell of muteness when she is pregnant with the twins. Esteban rightly recognizes that Clara uses this as a “refuge,” underlining how the women of the story use silence as a powerful tool. That a man as proud and traditionalist as Esteban displays this level of insight into Clara’s behavior is a sign of both his love for her and his capacity for emotional growth.

“I wouldn’t have mentioned this episode if Tránsito Soto hadn’t played such an important role in my life a long time later […] But this story could not have been written if she hadn’t intervened to rescue us and, in the process, our memories.”

Esteban recollects a time when he crossed paths with Tránsito Soto, asserting that he narrates the incident only because she will play an important role later in the story. The book often employs such explicit foreshadowing to underline important connections and parallels and to keep the reader engaged by building a sense of intrigue. In a story that places so much emphasis on passing down stories, it is also significant that Esteban credits Tránsito with saving the family’s “memories.”

“Blanca laughed at the story and said it was impossible, because hens are born stupid and weak and foxes are born astute and strong, but Pedro Tercero did not laugh. He spent the whole evening absorbed in thought, ruminating on the story of the fox and the hens, and perhaps that was the night the boy began to become a man.”

Pedro García tells Pedro Tercero and Blanca the story of a coop of hens who come together to defeat a fox that terrorizes their coop at night. This story symbolizes the Marxist ideology that features at different points in the book, with the hens representing the workers uniting in revolution against their exploiters. Blanca’s dismissal of the story as improbable is significant, as it points to her upper-class upbringing, influenced by her father’s patriarchal beliefs. Pedro Tercero’s reaction is equally significant, foreshadowing the kind of ideological bent and political activity he will adopt in the years to come.

In those three months they had come to love each other with the ecstatic passion that would torment them for the rest of their lives. With time their love became more persistent and invulnerable, but it already had the depth and certainty that characterized it later on."

The book explores love in multiple ways. Instant connections and intense love recur throughout, beginning with Esteban and Rosa and then with Esteban and Clara. Esteban’s daughter does not escape this; her connection with Pedro Tercero is instantaneous, even though they are both children. This relationship develops into an intense, passionate, and enduring love as they mature. Alba and Miguel will also experience the same kind of instant connection.

“[…] Blanca arrived and shoved him away, never suspecting that this evil, darkskinned creature was her nephew and that he would one day be the instrument of a tragedy that would befall her family.”

Esteban García first appears in the novel as a young boy—the only person around when his great-grandfather, Pedro García, passes away. While García is aware of his background, the Truebas are not. The fact that his father’s family does not acknowledge his existence and worth leads him to harbor a deep hatred for the Truebas that culminates in terrible acts of violence. The reference to García as “darkskinned” points to the intersecting role of class and race in his dispossession; the tenants who worked on haciendas were typically Indigenous or had a much larger share of Indigenous ancestry than the European-descended elite who owned the property. García’s future, intertwined with the fate of his grandfather’s family, is foreshadowed here.

“Clara never spoke to her husband again. She stopped using her married name and removed the fine gold wedding ring that he had placed on her finger twenty years before […] Esteban, humiliated and furious, remained with the sensation that something in his life had been destroyed forever.”

Clara distances herself from Esteban after he strikes her when she defends Blanca and Pedro Tercero’s affair. Multiple things are significant about this passage. Firstly, Clara once again employs silence as self-preservation and an assertion of power. Secondly, that she reverts back to the del Valle name reveals that despite being married to a deeply patriarchal man, Clara always retained and was capable of exerting her independence and autonomy as a woman. Finally, despite his generally violent nature, this is the first and only time Esteban ever strikes Clara, as she is the person he cares about most in the world. He instantly regrets his actions and feels her loss keenly, underscoring his intense and enduring love for her.

“Amanda clasped him to her breast frenetically. She said in a moment of inspiration, ‘I’d give my life for you, Miguel.’ She did not know then that one day she would have to.”

Promises are a recurring motif in the book, and they are often fulfilled in unexpected ways. Amanda will make good on her promise to Miguel when she dies under torture, refusing to give up her brother’s whereabouts to the new regime that is hunting him. This passage also displays yet another example of explicit foreshadowing.

“He was reading the love sonnets of the Poet, who was by now a world-renowned figure, as Clara had predicted the first time she heard him recite in his telluric voice at one of her literary soirées.”

“The Poet” is a character based on Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, whose verses comprise the epigraph of the book. Though never named, the Poet appears first as a guest at Clara’s soirées, which is where Alba meets him. Repeated mentions of him throughout the book show him gaining greater prominence and popularity, and Alba and Esteban eventually attend his funeral.

Alba was born feet first, which is a sign of good luck. Her Grandmother Clara searched her back and found the tiny star-shaped mark that distinguishes those born to true happiness.”

From the very outset, Alba is painted as extraordinary. She is born lucky, she is destined for true happiness, she inherits her great-aunt Rosa’s unique green hair, and she succeeds in softening her ill-tempered grandfather when no one else has. On the one hand, these predictions prove ironic, as Alba suffers intense trauma later in the story. Another perspective, however, is that her luck lies in how she survives her suffering and transcends the pain to make a wise choice about breaking her family’s cycle of vengeance.

“Alba knew that her grandmother was the soul of the big house on the corner. Everybody else learned it later, when Clara died and the house lost its flowers, its nomadic friends, and its playful spirits and entered into an era of decline.”

Clara is the one who keeps her family together, despite both her own eccentricities and the vastly differing characters of her husband, children, and granddaughter. This is partly attributable to the magic that surrounds her as a character; Alba speaks of this earlier in the story, when she describes the fantastical world and time in which Clara lived. Fittingly, the flowers, guests, and spirits all stop visiting the house upon Clara’s demise.

“‘Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change,’ Clara had said.”

Alba is the only one unperturbed by Clara’s passing because she has internalized her grandmother’s lesson about death and birth merely being two different changes. Clara’s comfort with death and the afterworld springs from her ability to communicate with the spirits of the deceased even when she is alive. Although Alba does not inherit these clairvoyant abilities, she does imbibe her grandmother’s equanimity and character.

“‘Charity, like Socialism, is an invention of the weak to exploit the strong and bring them to their knees.’ 

‘I don’t believe in your theory of the weak and the strong,’ Jaime replied.

‘That’s the way it is in nature. We live in a jungle.’

‘Yes, because the people who make up the rules think like you! But it won’t always be that way.’”

Esteban and Jaime argue about politics, exposing their vastly differing world views. The patriarchal and imperialist Esteban, senator of the Conservative Party, continues to believe in a natural social hierarchy. Jaime, influenced by Marxist ideology and the beliefs of his friend Pedro Tercero, opposes this order, which he sees as neither natural nor desirable. Jaime believes that the power balance will not always remain as it is, and he is proven right when the Socialists come to power later in the story.

“But Alba was not interested in politics; she wanted only to talk about love.”

Politics and political activity remain a largely male sphere within the context of the book. Although the women in the story do hold beliefs and convictions independent of their partners—as evidenced by Clara’s disagreement with the way Esteban treats his tenants—this does not translate into large-scale political activity. Alba supports Miguel because of her love for him, not out of deep political conviction. Recognizing this, he refuses her offer to join the guerrillas after the military coup later in the story.

Remembering all that, Alba discovered that the nightmare had been crouched inside her all those years and that García was still the beast waiting for her in the shadows, ready to jump on top of her at any turn of life. She could not know it was a premonition.”

Alba’s first interaction with García is an unpleasant one; he fondles her in the library at Tres Marías when she is only six years old. The interaction frightens Alba in the moment, but she forgets it; however, at 14, she comes across García again in the garden at the estate, and he forcibly kisses her. García becomes the stuff of her nightmares following this; while the nightmare itself foreshadows the torture she will later endure at his hands, the inevitability of this outcome is also explicitly spelled out in this passage.

Ten months and eleven days later he would recall Luisa Mora’s prophetic words, when they took Alba away in the middle of the night, while the curfew was in force.”

The Mora sisters are representatives of Clara’s world—a world filled with magic and spiritualism. Luisa Mora’s prophecy (that Alba is in grave danger and that Esteban will be on the winning side but at great personal cost) eventually comes true, just as Clara’s premonitions usually did. Alba is arrested by the political police and tortured by García; Esteban celebrates the military coup and the fall of the left but eventually loses his son to death, his daughter to exile, and (temporarily) his granddaughter to prison.

“I called him so many times that I finally saw him, but when he came he was covered with dried blood and rags, dragging streamers of barbed wire across the waxed parquet floors. That was how I learned that he had died exactly as the soldier reported. Only then did I begin to speak of tyranny.”

Esteban refuses to believe the account of Jaime’s death until the latter appears before him as a bloody apparition. There are two significant things about this passage: Firstly, it marks the point at which Esteban finally begins to see the error of his ways and leads him to eventually admit his mistake to Blanca and Alba. Secondly, it highlights the characteristics of magical realism as a literary style: Even an extremely materialist man like Esteban, who shuns magic and spiritualism as explored by his wife when she was alive, is not shocked by or disbelieving of the presence of spirits and apparitions. Reality and fantasy blend seamlessly in such a text, and the magical is an accepted part of everyday life.

“It was as if they had opened a valve and all the pain, fear, and anger of those days had issued from their chests and rolled onto the street, rising in a terrible shout to the thick black clouds above. […] The Poet’s funeral had turned into the symbolic burial of freedom.”

The Poet’s funeral is one among a number of elements that point to the possibility of the book being set in Chile. Pablo Neruda, whom the Poet is based on, died in a manner similar to that which the story describes; his funeral too occurred amidst a huge police presence, with attendees and mourners using the opportunity to voice their dissent and unhappiness with the new regime.

“Tránsito Soto has gotten where she has because, among other things, she knows how to pay her debts. […] Two days later she called me on the phone. 

‘It’s Tránsito Soto, patrón. I did what you asked me to.’”

Tránsito Soto repays her debt of 50 pesos to Esteban by helping him find Alba. As Tránsito Soto predicted 50 years ago, Esteban and she have crossed paths multiple times over the span of their lives, which have contained all the unexpected turns she anticipated. Her repayment is a good example, having a completely different character and much larger significance than the original 50 peso loan.