РефератыИностранный языкMaMatriarchs Are The Most Influential Characters In

Matriarchs Are The Most Influential Characters In

The Novels ‘One Hundred Years Of Solitude’ And ‘Th Essay, Research Paper


“I had lost my wife and my daughter. My mother, my sister, dear old


Nana?were all dead. Even Rosa returned to haunt me like an unforgettable


grief.”a Both ‘One hundred Years Of


Solitude’ and ‘The House Of The Spirits’ have men as their most apparent


decision makers, but behind the scenes women control and influence the decisions


of men to the extent that without the input of these few women, the course of


the plots in these novels would have taken an entirely different route. Each of


these women represents a different entity and each has a different way of


influencing the men in their lives. Ursula Buendia from


‘Solitude’b, and Clara Trueba from ‘House


of Spirits’c are the matriarchs in their


respective novels and therefore the most influential women in their novels.


Clara manipulates the course of decisions through her mystical ways of


forecasting. Ursula on the other hand communicates with Jose Arcadio Buendia and


influences him in a more firm and stable manner through her assertive


personality. Clara has a tremendous influence over Esteban’s decisions through her


mysterious and mystical ways. “Clara the clairvoyant could interpret


dreams.”e She is such a mysterious person, which


attracts Esteban to her and what little he knows and understands about her, and


at the same time tells him to keep his distance until she allows him to approach


her, like the time she left Tres Marias two days after he hit her and he did not


try to stop her. “Clara never spoke to her husband again? Two days


later, Clara and Blanca left Tres Marias.”f This


shows Clara’s indifferent attitude towards Esteban’s feelings and establishes


that Clara does not need Esteban as much as he needs her. Clara from then on


seemed to control most of Esteban’s thoughts, lifestyle and emotions through


“I felt so alone after that?Loneliness would never leave


me.”gEsteban bent over backwards in order to


please Clara “It was the special surprise he had prepared for


her.”h Ursula has different characteristics than Clara, but she too is dominant over


her husband’s decisions. She is assertive, firm and capable and has


“unbreakable nerves”mand will stand no


nonsense from Jose Arcadio Buendia or his crazy notions. She prevents Jose


Arcadio Buendia from leaving Macondo. “We will not leave?We will stay


here.”u The matriarchs influence their families because they take care of their


families and they are the heads of their families while their husbands pursue


other interests like dedicating time to Tres Marias in the case of Esteban


“I was going to spend many years – perhaps even my whole life – Tres


Marias.”i and thus the husbands are ineffective


in managing their households and thus showing the matriarchs dominance in their


households.. Jose Arcadio Buendia for example pursues his interests in science and


therefore forgets that he has a family “Instead of going around thinking


about your crazy inventions, you should be worrying about your sons? Look at the


state they are in, running wild just like


donkeys.”j Ursula reprimands him for neglecting


his children and thus exercises her influence by stopping him to have a look at


the world around him and take responsibility for his family. Esteban on the other hand pursues his interests in Tres Marias and whilst


building it up he forgets about Ferula and his Mother. “It bothered her?


bored, tired and unhappy while her brother had no taste of such


obligations.”k The author’s use of a list of


words to portray the extent of ferula’s frustrations. It reveals that Esteban


does not care about handling his sick mother or the household and leaves that to


Ferula. Esteban later pursues his business interests and politics and forgets


about his family. “Esteban Trueba was so busy ? that he had no time to


think about anything.”l This includes his family


and mother and sister. Whilst their husbands are pursuing their interests and busy, the wives are


busy taking over their households and organizing and restructuring them


according to their own tastes. Ursula was a strong woman and “thanks to


her the floors of tamped earth, the unwhitewashed mud walls? were always


clean.”m Whilst Clara worked “between the sewing


workshop, the general store, the school.”n This shows that


Clara is not as clairvoyant as she seems and is capable of taking


responsibility. The wives are using their husband’s weak influences in the domestic area to


fight their husband’s dominance and therefore they use time and familiarity as


tools. Over time the household’s become use to the matriarchs as the backbones


of the family. The households’ familiarity with the women makes the matriarchs


more willing to fill in the gaps left by their husbands. Also the actions of the


husbands alienate themselves from the r

est of the rest of the family. Esteban’s


violence alienates him from his family “He lost control and struck her


in the face, knocking her against the wall? Clara never spoke to her husband


again,”o and Jose Arcadio Buendia’s crazy fits accelerate


his loss of influence over his household. “He acquired a habit of


talking to himself, of walking through the house without paying attention to


anyone? his feverish activity was interrupted and was replaced by a kind of


fascination,”p Jose Arcadio Buendia’s crazy fits


forces Ursula to take action and since she loves him and wont let him go on


crazy journeys, she ties him to a tree for the rest of his days. “?With


the savage violence of his uncommon strength he smashed to dust the equipment in


the alchemy laboratory?ten men were needed to get him down, fourteen to tie him


up?left him tied up, barking in the strange language and giving off a green


froth at the mouth.”vThe deliberate exaggeration


in the choice of words show how undesirably violent Jose Arcadio Buendia could


be. Both men had traits that made them undesirable and made them stand out from


the rest of their households. Jose Arcadio Buendia’s fits and Esteban’s violence


led them to slowly destroy any links and with that any influence they ever held


over their families. Clara and Ursula’s influence does not only affect the men in the family.


Their influence is powerful enough to affect the direction of the plots of both


novels since through the males they influence the direction that the plot takes.


These two female characters have portrayed actions and influences that affected


the plot to the extent that their actions have been felt throughout their


respective novels. Clara influences the plot in “House of Spirits” when Esteban


becomes more humble and realizes that he has lost Clara the night he hit her


“He knelt by her side, crying and begging her forgiveness, trying to


explain,”q and since then she has not spoken to


him. Clara does not tell him about her feelings but rather withdraws in to


silence and thus portrays this image for Esteban to take as a form of a victory.


Esteban also does not understand Clara and thus he struggles to win back her


favor without ever succeeding. “Two days later, Clara and Blanca left ?


Esteban ? remained with a sensation that something in his life had been


destroyed forever.”r Ursula on the other hand is quite different to Clara in reacting to events


and she fights for justice and what she believes in. When the story becomes more


chaotic due to the war, Colonel Aureliano Buendia goes to fight while Jose


Arcadio becomes the dictator of Macondo. Ursula shows her influence by being


firm with her son and limiting his activities and getting rid of his laws.


“Whipping him without mercy? Arcadio curled up like a snail? From that


time on she was the one who ruled in the


town.”sThe simile clearly portrays Arcadio’s


defensive instincts and helplessness. Therefore, Ursula exercises her influence


over him as a matriarch and as a mother and she holds that influence until old


age when she became too weak physically to exercise her influence over the


family and thus the children started playing with her like a doll


“Ursula cried in lamentation when she discovered that for more than


three years she had been a plaything for the


children,”t and the adults began to leave and


slowly the household that Ursula had managed for most of a century began to fall


apart. Ursula is given an image of a toy for the children, the opposite image of


what she used to really be before.Even though these two novels seem to


be dominated by men, in this essay I have shown that in fact women are more


influential then men and thus dominate the action. The matriarchs are the most


influential of all the women; it is in fact arguable that their influence is


such that they have a possibility of being the protagonists in the novel due to


their influence on events. Footnotes a)House Of Spirits – pg 235 b)Key: Solitude is short for ‘One Hundred Years Of Solitude’ by G.G.M c)Key: House Of Spirits – ‘The House Of The Spirits’ By Isabelle Allende. e) House Of Spirits – pg 95 f) House Of Spirits – pg 234 g) House Of Spirits – pg 235 h) House Of Spirits – pg 119 i) House Of Spirits – pg 69 j) Solitude – pg 14 k) House Of Spirits – pg 59 l) House Of Spirits – pg 71 m) Solitude – Pg 9 n) House Of Spirits – pg 127 o) House Of Spirits – pg 233-234 p) Solitude – pg 4-5 q) House Of Spirits – pg 234 r) House Of Spirits – pg 234 s) Solitude – Pg 108-109 t) Solitude – pg 339 u) Solitude – pg 14 v) Solitude – pg 81 Word Count: 1,475 words BIBLIOGRAPHY Book: The House Of The Spirits Author: Isabel Allende Publisher: Cox & Wyman Ltd, A Black Swan book. Date Published: Black Swan edition 1998 Copyright Date: 1985 by Isabel Allende & Alfred A.


Knopf, Inc. Book: One Hundred Years Of Solitude Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez Publisher: Penguin Group Date Published: Penguin books 1972 Copyright Date: 1970 by Harper & Row, Publishers

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