The House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferré

First published: 1995

Type of plot: Realism

Time of work: 1917 to 1993

Locale: Ponce and San Juan, Puerto Rico

Principal Characters:

• Buenaventura Mendizabal, a descendant of Spanish conquistadores; Quintín’s father
• Quintín Mendizabal, a historian by training; a wealthy importer and the husband of Isabel Monfort
• Isabel Monfort, a Vassar College-educated writer
• Petra Avilés, Isabel and Quintín’s clairvoyant mulatta maid

The Novel

The House on the Lagoon is the story of an island immersed in constant struggle on many levels: racial, linguistic, religious, economic, and social. It is about one woman’s attempt to understand and redeem her history, and that of all the women in her family, by writing an account of their lives. The accuracy of this account becomes an issue in the plot; however, it is her bravery in attempting the rediscovery that becomes significant. It is also about a husband who is terrified of his wife’s laying claim to herself and revealing some embarrassing truths about him and his family. The novel illustrates how the continuing debate of statehood versus independence for the island has shaped every generation born in Puerto Rico in the twentieth century.

The House on the Lagoon is a semiautobiographical family history spanning approximately one hundred years, from the 1880’s to the early 1990’s. Most of the action, however, focuses on the Mendizabal family from July 4, 1917, when Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship, to the day of a hotly contested plebiscite on statehood in 1993, when fictional independentistas stage a takeover, kidnapping an important executive.

This account of the Mendizabals’ rise and fall serves as a microcosm of twentieth century Puerto Rican history. Rosario Ferré was an upper-class woman whose father, Luis Ferré, was a governor in Puerto Rico in the late 1960’s, founder of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, and one of the island’s wealthiest businessmen. In the novel, she satirizes the milieu she fled to become a writer, refining and exaggerating her mocking spirit into something surreal and devastating. She is less harsh when she writes about provincial life in Ponce, where she was born and reared.

In the multigenerational tale’s foreground is the story of an upper-class Puerto Rican couple, Quintín Mendizabal and his wife, Isabel Monfort, whose political views conflict. Isabel advocates Puerto Rican independence, while Quintín supports close ties with the United States. Their views also clash over the role of women—he believes in traditional women’s roles; she advocates feminism. In addition, they disagree about the novel Isabel is writing—a history that includes stories about her family as well as her husband’s family.

Ferré interweaves the passions and struggles of these two families with several decades of Puerto Rican history, with conflicts of race, class, and changing relations with Spain and the United States. Isabel is writing a novel within a novel chronicling the two families, descendants of Spanish, Corsican, African, and New England ancestors.

Quintín discovers his wife’s manuscript hidden in a bookcase. Beginning with marginal notes and condescending comments, Quintín ultimately writes his own interpretation of events and becomes the novel’s second narrator. He corrects glaring anachronisms, protests scandalous portrayals of his as well as his family’s behavior, and rewrites the stories from his own perspective. Yet when Isabel’s manuscript reveals his ruthless business practices, his complicity in the suicide of one of his brothers, and his harsh treatment of his rebellious sons, he feels threatened and decides to suppress her version of the truth. When all else fails, he resorts to violence when she decides to leave him. Finally, she finds the courage to defend herself and her children at the end of the novel; she hits him with an iron bar and kills him.

Within this dual version of history, Ferré also maps out a geography of the haves and the have-nots on the island, centering the action on the Mendizabal family’s San Juan mansion. Upstairs are the Mendizabals, with their materially successful fusion of Spanish conquistador and American capitalist methods, their hot tempers and self-destructive habits. Downstairs are the servants, the wise and patient Avilés family, brought as slaves from Angola in the eighteenth century. The Mendizabal patriarchs meet their match in elderly Petra Avilés, granddaughter of an African-born rebel slave whose owners had cut out his tongue. Threatened with censorship and control by her husband, Isabel finds natural allies in Petra and her family.

The Characters

In The House on the Lagoon, stereotypical perceptions of Puerto Ricans as docile, reverential, gregarious, and noncompetitive are challenged. Ferré’s male and female characters are at times destructive and self-serving. As Puerto Rico has been oppressed by the ruling majority since colonial times, Puerto Rico has, in turn, oppressed its mulatto population.

On the other hand, Ferré’s characters have come under attack from some critics. Although hundreds of characters populate the novel—the author includes a detailed family tree of both Quintín’s and Isabel’s families—critics have accused Ferré of creating stereotypical, one-dimensional portraits: rich men’s wives who dabble in the arts to pass the time; greedy, exploitative businessmen; black characters whose main function is to serve the upper classes. Characters who do take up political or feminist beliefs for the most part abandon these beliefs when they are no longer expedient.

By including a multitude of characters in her novel, Ferré is able to represent the complex mix of Puerto Rican society and to incorporate a wide range of opposing political views, from independence and statehood to support of the island’s status quo as a commonwealth, from an open endorsement of Spanish as the official language to the struggle to make English the national language. Thus Ferré chronicles some of Puerto Rico’s major political and emotional upheavals in the twentieth century while simultaneously focusing on the diplomatic, cultural, and domestic spheres of existence.

Buenaventura Mendizabal, the Spanish father of Quintín, first settled in Puerto Rico in 1917 and built a modest cottage on the Alamares Lagoon. As a descendant of Francisco Pizarro, he inherits a coat of arms. At first he prospers by illegally importing contraband goods, then founds the highly lucrative Mendizabal and Company shipping business. Mendizabal passes on his flair for business, his forceful personality, and his need for social status to his son, Quintín.

Quintín Mendizabal, trained as a historian at Columbia University in New York City, becomes part of the family business and rules his household with the same firm hand as he does his business. His support for Puerto Rican statehood and his fervent embrace of American culture clash with his wife’s views. His rewriting of his family’s history, through marginal notes in Isabel’s manuscript, and his clash over their son, Willie, born from his liaison with a mulatta, lead to an ultimatum from Isabel. As the island is in the midst of a plebiscite on the issue of independence, Isabel decides that her marriage has been a mistake and leaves Quintín. While escaping the island by boat, Quintín dies when Isabel hits him with an iron bar. The death of Quintín opens a new door of independence for Isabel.

Isabel Monfort, the granddaughter of Corsican immigrants and Quintín’s wife of twenty-seven years, believes in liberation for women as well as Puerto Rican independence from the United States. Although she is an imaginative novelist with a Vassar education, she is a weak historian and imbues more fiction than fact into her historical account. When she begins writing the family history, she initially intends the manuscript to celebrate their marriage, weaving their respective stories into a single fabric. Yet from the outset, she hides the manuscript from her husband. When she discovers that her husband has found the manuscript and rewritten many key passages, she is too timid to rebel against his interference. She does, however, summon up the courage to fight for her and her children’s independence at the end of the novel. The story centers around Isabel, the narrator and chronicler of events, until Quintín becomes narrator in several chapters.

Petra Avilés, the Mendizabals’ mulatta servant, functions as confidant to Isabel. She also serves to underscore the theme of racial inequality in Puerto Rican society. The novel’s conclusion affirms the necessity of interracial alliances, both sexual and familial, in the development of a healthy Puerto Rican community.

Critical Context

Although it was chosen as a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award, The House on the Lagoon, Ferré’s first novel in English, sparked controversy among critics for its depiction of Puerto Rican society. Some viewed it as derivative in style and clichéd in characterization and theme; others praised it for its complex structure and mocking spirit.

Although there are some thematic similarities to Ferré’s earlier works—the theme of personal, social, and political identity—the style of The House on the Lagoon is profoundly different from her previous work. Instead of her typically baroque prose, in The House on the Lagoon, Ferré uses language that has been described as accessible and concise. Her prose is simple, and she uses a structure that is relatively straightforward. However, Ferré also fills her narrative with prophecy, sorcery, and black magic, drawing comparisons with Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende.

Ferré received a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Manhattanville College, a master’s degree from the University of Puerto Rico, and a doctorate in Latin American literature from the University of Maryland. Her career developed mainly in the Spanish-speaking world until the 1990’s. In the tradition of Latin American writers such as Maria Luisa Bombal and Manuel Puig, Ferré has not only translated some of her own work into English—a novel, Maldito amor (1986; Sweet Diamond Dust, 1988) and a collection of short stories, Papules de Pandora (1976; The Youngest Doll, 1991)—but also written in English. Reflecting Puerto Rico’s identity crisis, Ferré’s writing is informed by the author’s dual identity and perspective. The novel is important as an entertaining introduction to Puerto Rican history and culture.

Bibliography

Friedman, Ellen G. Review of The House on the Lagoon, by Rosario Ferré. Review of Contemporary Fiction (Spring, 1996): 168. Stresses the weakness and predictability of Ferré’s characters and their political views.

Hintz, Suzanne S. Rosario Ferré: A Search for Identity. New York: Peter Lang, 1995. The only English-language book-length critical study of Ferré’s fiction. Although it does not include discussion of The House on the Lagoon, this excellent study analyzes the author’s earlier works, which contain political and social themes that appear also in The House on the Lagoon. Contains a bibliography of works by and about Ferré.

Publishers Weekly. Review of The House on the Lagoon, by Rosario Ferré. (July 3, 1995): 47. Discusses Ferré’s novel as semifictional autobiography and a compelling panorama of Puerto Rican history.

Stavans, Ilan. “Serving Two Masters.” The Nation (November 20, 1995): 640-642. Compares The House on the Lagoon to other contemporary Latin American works with similar themes—specifically Puerto Rico’s divided self—and techniques.