This Sunday by José Donoso
"This Sunday" by José Donoso is a novel that intricately explores human relationships through the lens of a dysfunctional family dynamic. The narrative is divided into five parts, employing two distinct voices: a grandchild reflecting on childhood weekends at his grandparents' home and a third-person narrator providing deeper insights into the lives of Alvaro and Chepa. Central to the plot are Alvaro, a weak and self-absorbed man, and Chepa, a domineering matriarch whose control over her family masks her own frustrations.
The story begins with Alvaro's troubled youth and unfolds into a complex marriage with Chepa, ultimately revealing their emotional isolation and the impact of their selfishness on those around them. A pivotal character, Maya, emerges as a catalyst for change, embodying Chepa's repressed desires and challenging the status quo of their bourgeois existence. The novel delves into themes of domination, repression, and the painful consequences of detachment from reality.
By portraying the characters’ struggles against their own limitations and the societal structures that bind them, Donoso critiques the fragility of human connections and the destructive nature of isolation. The work reflects the author's engagement with critical realism, emphasizing a metaphysical conflict between those who confront reality and those who seek to escape it.
This Sunday by José Donoso
First published:Este domingo, 1966 (English translation, 1967)
Type of plot: Critical realism
Time of work: The late 1950’s
Locale: Santiago, Chile
Principal Characters:
Josefina Rosas de Vives (Chepa) , a wealthy woman with a possessive personalityAlvaro Vives , her husband, who finds refuge from his failed marriage by isolating himself in his own worldMaya , a convicted murderer, who exercises a dark attraction over ChepaVioleta , the former maid of the Vives family and the former lover of Alvaro
The Novel
The plot of This Sunday is divided into five parts, presented through two different narrative voices. The first narrator, one of the grandchildren of Chepa, remembers, many years later, the weekends spent as a child at the house of his grandparents. His narrative includes the parts entitled “In the Fishbowl,” “Legitimate Games,” and “Sunday Night.” The second voice is that of a third-person narrator who presents certain aspects of the life of Alvaro and Chepa unknown to the grandchild, and who relates the chapters entitled “Part One” and “Part Two.”
This section of the story starts when Alvaro is a high school student. While his family is vacationing at a nearby resort, he must stay at home to prepare for exams. In the solitude of the house, sexual relations develop between Alvaro and Violeta, the maid in charge of taking care of him. Years later, Alvaro marries Chepa, but the marriage fails very soon because of temperamental incompatibilities. Both Alvaro and Chepa immerse themselves in selfish existences, isolated from each other, each of them solely concerned with his or her own interests. Alvaro takes refuge in himself, and Chepa hides her sexual frustrations behind charitable concerns for others. As the years pass, their marriage is reduced to a routine governed by the rules imposed by Chepa.
In a visit to the penitentiary, Chepa meets Maya, a brutal murderer. From the very first moment, she experiences a dark and irresistible attraction toward the convict and decides to obtain his freedom. Once she has achieved her goal, Chepa projects on Maya all her secret frustrations, hoping to exert absolute dominion over him, as she does with all those who surround her. Maya cannot cope with this type of life, and after a turbulent relationship of deceit and falsehood, he disappears.
The novel begins on a Sunday morning (its title alludes to this particular day) when Maya reappears several years later, seeking help from Chepa. Alvaro, however, impedes their meeting and, in doing so, sets in motion a fatal sequence of events.
The bulk of the novel concentrates on the torturous relationship between Chepa and Maya. Expanding from this point, the novel illuminates the distorted world of human relations that envelops all the characters, and its unavoidable breakdown.
The Characters
Chepa is a character-type frequently encountered in Donoso’s fiction. She is the incarnation of the matriarch—in this case, a frigid and frustrated woman whose life is governed by the urge to dominate others, whether they be members of her own family or those she considers in need of her insatiable willingness to help.
In Alvaro, Donoso presents the counterpart of the dictatorial matriarch: the pitifully weak man. Heir of a wealthy middle-class family, Alvaro is a man whose selfishness grows mainly out of his inability to face “real” life. When aging, he becomes a stranger to his own family, and even more of a stranger to his grandchildren, who call him “the doll.” At the beginning of the novel, the reader finds Alvaro in a panic facing the possibility of skin cancer. Nobody seems to believe him, but at the end his terrors will turn into reality.
Maya incarnates the unexpected element that destroys the artificial world built up by the Viveses. From their very first meeting, Maya exerts an animal attraction over Chepa, bringing to life her repressed sexuality. Tortured by the conflict between gratitude and hatred toward the woman who has obtained his freedom but is turning him into a toy, Maya—Alvaro’s macho counterpart—rebels against the complacent, self-contained world represented by Chepa, the world of bourgeois society.
Like Maya, the maid Violeta, the fourth major character, represents the world outside the sanctuary of the bourgeois household; she is Chepa’s counterpart, as Maya is Alvaro’s. At the end, Violeta will also be involved in the torturous relationship between Chepa and Maya, eventually becoming the main victim of its dire consequences.
Critical Context
José Donoso belongs to the tradition of critical realism characteristic of most Chilean authors, for whom revealing the fragility of the dominant social order has been a constant, significant achievement. The fictitious world presented in most of Donoso’s novels is predicated on conflict between upper and lower levels of society.
Nevertheless, Donoso’s ultimate concerns are not with class struggle or any other kind of social conflict, but rather with a metaphysical conflict between two different modes of consciousness: that of human beings who do not wish to face reality and who seek to impose their own order on it, and that of those who meet reality without such artificial constructs. Donoso shows that, sooner or later, the former will always pay painfully for their hubris.
Bibliography
Finnegan, Pamela May. The Tension of Paradox: José Donoso’s “The Obscene Bird of Night” as Spiritual Exercises. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992. Finnegan examines the novel as an expression of man’s estrangement from the world. The novel’s two alter-egos, Humberto/Mudito, perceive and receive stimuli, yet they regard the world differently, even though they are interdependent. In a series of chapters, Finnegan follows Donoso’s intricate treatment of this idea, showing how the world composes and discomposes itself. A difficult but rewarding study for advanced students. Includes a bibliography.
McMurray, George R. Authorizing Fictions: José Donoso’s “Casa De Campo.” London: Tamesis Books, 1992. Chapters on Donoso’s handling of voice and time, his narrative strategies (re-presenting characters), and his use of interior duplication and distortion. Includes a bibliography.
McMurray, George R. José Donoso. Boston: Twayne, 1979. An excellent introductory study, with chapters on Donoso’s biography, his short stories, The Obscene Bird of Night, and Sacred Families. Includes chronology, detailed notes, and annotated bibliography.
Magnarelli, Sharon. Understanding José Donoso. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993. See especially chapter 1: “How to Read José Donoso.” Subsequent chapters cover his short stories and major novels. Includes a bibliography.
Mandri, Flora. José Donoso’s House of Fiction: A Dramatic Construction of Time and Place. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1995. Chapters on all of Donoso’s major fiction, exploring his treatment of history and of place. Includes detailed notes and extensive bibliography.