The Shrouded Woman by María Luisa Bombal

First published:La amortajada, 1938 (English translation, 1948)

Type of plot: Feminist surrealism

Time of work: The first half of the twentieth century

Locale: The southern part of Chile and the fantastic realm of Death

Principal Characters:

• Ana María, the protagonist, a typical housewife of the Latin American upper social strata
• Ricardo, her lover when both he and Ana María were adolescents
• Antonio, her husband
• Fernando, an older man who courts her in the later years of her life

The Novel

In The Shrouded Woman María Luisa Bombal skillfully juxtaposes the unknown and supernatural realm of Death with concrete reality. At the beginning of the novel, Ana María lies dead and is surrounded by those who once had a relationship with her. Although she is dead, Ana María can still hear and see those who are mourning her. Simultaneously, while she lies in her casket, the protagonist is led into the past as she recalls events significant to her life, and she enters the supernatural space of Death inhabited by mysterious voices, uncanny landscapes, and strange insects and flowers. The juxtaposition of Life and Death is created in the novel through the cinematic technique of a montage presented in counterpoint. Such a montage captures the coexistence of elements of reality traditionally conceived as separate entities: The past binds to the present, both merging into a single instant; consciousness survives beyond death; and the concrete objective reality fuses with the mysterious zone of Death. Besides the basic omniscient narrator, there are several other narrators who give their own testimony on Ana María, in this way adding conflicting views and interpretations to the story of her life. Thus, Ana María becomes a multifaceted character: a passionate lover, a selfish woman, a naïve girl, a strict mother, and an intuitive human being with mystical doubts about God. In the same manner that the shrouded woman acquires a new understanding of her life through the fragmented memories of the past, the reader adds these different perspectives about Ana María to realize finally that a human being is what he thinks of himself as well as the different images he projects on others. The protagonist’s journey into Death is the ultimate act of Life, not only because she now comprehends the real meaning of her existence but also because Death has allowed her to annul the worries of everyday life, penetrating thereby into the mysteries of people and nature. Ironically, then, the burial of Ana María at the end of the novel becomes a symbol of what true Life should be: the profound and wise experiences of the Self as part of a wider cosmic order.

The Characters

Ana María is a prototype of the Latin American women in the 1930’s who did not have an active participation in economics or politics. Therefore, in the restrictive role of wife and mother, the protagonist searches for love as the only means to achieve a goal in life. Her relations with Ricardo, Antonio, and Fernando reveal three crucial stages in her life: sexual initiation, the passive acceptance of social conventions symbolized by marriage, and erotic sublimation in unconsummated adultery. Significantly, these three stages mark the progressive degradation of those instinctive and primordial elements in feminine character being slowly eroded by societal conformism.

The love experiences with Ricardo are tinged with sensuality nurtured by sensations equated with nature. Ricardo’s adolescent body is compared to the vitality of the wild forest and the indomitable strength of a stallion. His caresses are described as a dark and wild carnation. Ana María ignores social regulations that demand virginity and gives in to instincts deeply rooted in nature. Thus, when she becomes pregnant, she feels completely identified with budding trees, the graceful flight of doves, and the sounds surrounding her. She is, in fact, intimately united to Matter. Ricardo’s abandonment and the accidental abortion destroy this natural and harmonious relationship with nature. She encloses herself in her room and passively accepts Antonio’s marriage proposal.

Married life is described as empty and unfulfilling. In spite of her frustration, Ana María feigns happiness, keeping up with appearances, although she is conscious of the unfair situation regarding men and women. This view of society is made explicit in the following statement: “While women have men as the pivot of their life, men succeed in directing their passion to politics or work. But the fate of women seems to be to turn over and over in their heart some love sorrow while sitting in a neatly ordered house, facing an unfinished tapestry.”

As the years go by, Ana María withdraws into herself, becoming narrow and petty. She encourages Fernando to court her, a selfish act that gratifies her vanity, but she never allows him to kiss her—thus protecting herself from moral transgression in committing real adultery. Her relationship with Fernando is marked by selfishness and cruelty; moreover, although she is not in love with him, it is significant that her life is still dependent on a relation with a man. Fernando’s visits become a raison d’etre for the protagonist, and even on her deathbed she anxiously waits for him.

Ana María’s trajectory must be defined in terms of this existential subordination to men, characterized in the novel as symbols of power; in this sense, the lover motif is highly significant: domination and physical strength in Ricardo, pride and power in Antonio, selfishness and rationality in Fernando. These primary characteristics of the male, as perceived from a female perspective, are, in fact, the qualities usually attributed to men in Latin American society, according to recent sociological studies on sex roles.

Ana María represents a tragic view of women and their place in society. As though screened in by a shroud, the protagonist ends up alienated because she is forced into a passive acceptance of the status quo. Ironically, the solution to this dilemma lies not in changing her historical role but rather in the supernatural realm of Death. It is only when she is dead that she is able to unveil the intrinsic nature of those she knew in life. Moreover, death allows her to penetrate the secrets of nature: the intensity of night, the sounds of rain, the beauty of tree bark.

Critical Context

When María Luisa Bombal published La última niebla in 1934 (The Final Mist, 1982), she was immediately acclaimed by critics as one of the most outstanding writers in Latin America. Radically departing from the realist mode in vogue, she constructed this first short novel on the ambiguous juxtaposition of dreams and reality experienced by a female protagonist who escapes her tragic social predicament through alienation. The publication of La amortajada in 1938 reaffirmed her position as an innovative writer, and, in 1942, her second book was awarded the National Prize as the best novel in Chile. In 1948, the English version, The Shrouded Woman, was published in the United States, and it was subsequently printed in Sweden, Germany, Great Britain, and Japan. The Spanish version of The Shrouded Woman has had eleven different editions, and, even today, it is a best-seller in Latin America.

Although literary criticism of Latin American literature has always undergone changes and revisions, The Shrouded Woman has remained one of the most significant Latin American novels ever published. Its impeccable technical elaboration and the presentation of a reality where the concrete and the marvelous coexist have made this novel a landmark of surrealistic accomplishment in Latin America. It is also a remarkable expression of women as second-class citizens with no right to change society. Its protagonist has been excluded from an active participation in history. It is precisely this marginal status that has caused a basic alienation, rendered through daydreaming, erotic fantasies, and an immersion in the primordial realm of the cosmic. As recent feminist studies have demonstrated, Bombal’s images of women not only denounce feminine subordination but also represent the innate essence of women as deeply rooted in nature. While according to her worldview men regulate natural forces to produce civilization, women as individuals of an intuitive nature grasp the mysterious irradiations of the universe in search of ancestral harmony. Power, violence, and civilization are, for the author, the basic expressions of the masculine, which, as opposed to the erotic and ancestral feminine, become irreconcilable forces doomed to noncommunication and sterility. Ana María in The Shrouded Woman as well as the other women presented in María Luisa Bombal’s works are subjected to the dominant male order, and the defeat of the female is the real source of their tragic destiny. While in The Shrouded Woman the only exit is death, in The Final Mist it is death in life conceived as a shrouded and oppressive mist that symbolizes social regulations imposed on women. If on the surface this appears to be a highly pessimistic view of women, subsequent works written by Latin American women have consistently coincided with María Luisa Bombal’s lucid testimony, which is presented through an artistic elaboration that is considered exceptional.

Bibliography

Adams, Michael I. Three Authors of Alienation: Bombal, Onetti, Carpentier. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975. Adams presents a sociopsychological critical interpretation of three Latin American authors whose works share similar themes.

Alegría, Fernando. “María Luisa Bombal.” In Latin American Writers, edited by Carlos A. Solé and Maria I. Abreau. Vol 3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989. An essay on the life and career of Bombal. Includes analysis of her works and a bibliography.

Guerra-Cunningham, Lucía. “Mariá Luisa Bombal.” In Spanish American Authors: The Twentieth Century, edited by Angel Flores. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1992. Profiles Bombal and includes an extensive bibliography of works by and about the author.

Mujica, Barbara. “The Shrouded Woman.” Americas 48 (January/February, 1996): 61-62. A review of Bombal’s novels. Mujica sees Bombal as a precursor of the Magical Realists and part of a literary elite that sought to integrate fantastic elements and social criticism into her work. A brief analysis and synopsis of The Final Mist and The Shrouded Woman are included.

Ryan, Bryan, ed. Hispanic Writers: A Selection of Sketches from “Contemporary Authors.” Detroit: Gale Research, 1991. Entry on Bombal gives an overview of her life, writing, and critical reaction to her work.