The Struggle Between Classes
The major characters in The House of the Spirits come
from two opposing classes: the landed aristocracy and the peasants.
Most of the population of Latin America, as well as all of the characters
in the novel, belong to one of these two classes. Essentially the
only other class distinction that might be drawn is that occupied
by those in civil service. Peasants can join the police force or
the army and gain access to education and a higher class status,
which is the case of Esteban Garcia. The del Valle and Trueba families
represent the land-owning upper-class criollos (a criollo is a person
who is born and raised in South America but is a direct descendant
of Spaniards), while the Garcias represent the peasants. The two
classes come into conflict because one (upper) owns the land that
the other (lower) works on. Especially in rural areas such as Tres
Marias, the upper classes control all of the infrastructure, such
as schools, transportation, banks, and hospitals, as well as all
of the capital. As the upper classes prosper, conflict mounts when
that prosperity is not equally distributed.
Several different attitudes are presented toward this
inequality in The House of the Spirits. Esteban
Trueba represents the conservative view—that the status quo should
be maintained and that there is no reason for the peasants to share
in the upper class’s wealth or to change their situation. Pedro
Tercero Garcia represents the revolutionary peasants who will work
to make that change happen. The Trueba women, as well as Jaime,
support the peasants. This sets up an important alliance between
all of those who are subjugated by the patriarchal system.
Simply by making class struggle a major theme of the novel, The House
of the Spirits supports the view of the peasants: the conservatives
would not see class struggle as a problem, let alone a topic around
which to organize a novel. The third person narration of the story
is in fact given in the perspective of Alba, a staunch supporter of
the socialist revolution. Alba’s views also prevail in the retrospective
commentary of Esteban Trueba, who slowly comes to accept his granddaughter’s
position.
The Power of Women
The protagonists of the novel are all women who work in
different and subtle ways to assert their rights. The House
of the Spirits can be seen as a woman-centered response
to the paradigmatic text of magical realism: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One
Hundred Years of Solitude. Where One Hundred Years
of Solitude centers around three generations of men, with
the women whom they love as important but secondary characters, The
House of the Spirits does the opposite. Clara, Blanca,
and Alba remain the focus of the story, while Esteban, Pedro Tercero,
and Miguel enter the story because they are the men those women
love or marry. Experiences particularly central to the lives of
women dominate the minor as well as the major events in the story,
such as the detailed descriptions of each childbirth and the abortion,
as well as the presentation of physical and sexual violence against
women.
Aside from Nivea’s commitment to female suffrage, the
women rarely explicitly condemn gender inequality. Each woman’s
life is, however, marked by it. All of the women in The
House of the Spirits are strong women who do not bow to
mistreatment. They choose subtle responses the situations, though,
instead of outright revolt. This very method of resistance can be
seen as particularly feminine. If violence and activity are male
traits, while gentleness and passivity are female ones, The
House of the Spirits shows that this does not mean that
men accomplish things and change things while women do not. On the
contrary, the women in The House of the Spirits effect
more long-lasting and drastic changes than do any of the men. While
the men lead revolutions that topple governments, those revolutions
are themselves quickly toppled. The women’s subtler methods of teaching
literacy and basic healthcare, setting curses, and refusing to speak
are far more effective in exacting permanent change.
The Importance of Genealogy
Although genealogy is a subtle theme in the novel, it
is ultimately the source of the denouement. Almost all of the characters
in the story belong to either the del Valle-Trueba family, or else
to the Garcia family. The family name or genealogy to which each
character belongs determines her or his class position. Genealogy
does not, however, follow simply from biological parenting. In fact,
the bloodlines of the Trueba and Garcia families cross repeatedly,
but Esteban Trueba works hard to assure that their family names
and their genealogies do not. In the novel, it is less whose genes
you share and more the last name you carry that determines genealogy.
At the birth of each child, the question of last name is raised.
In addition, at each point that a character wishes to mark a drastic
shift in alliances away from their father or family, they change
their last name. Despite Esteban’s efforts to make genealogy by
name the only type of genealogy that matters, his refusal to acknowledge
some of his biological children ultimately comes back to haunt him.
