Isabel Allende: Carnalismo and Female Identity

Abstract

This article proposes a comparative study of two novels, The House of the Spirits (1982) and Portrait in Sepia (2000) by Chilean author, Isabel Allende. In an attempt to represent various facets of Latin American female identity, this article uses carnalismo as recurring trope while reinstating the particular marginalized positions of these women as a subversive discourse altogether. These women do not rewrite, refashion or expropriate stories merely to satisfy some game-playing or some totalizing impulse. Instead, they juxtapose what we think we know of the past with alternative representations. The running argument in the article is therefore based on a celebration of subversive forms of matriarchy that rule untraditional domestic spaces. Furthermore, different storytelling formulations by the same author reflect certain trends in contemporary narrative, namely the ways in which narratives can turn one`s attention away from an aesthetic past towards a more broadly conceived sense of history as textually mediated and constructed. To this end, theoretical frameworks of carnalismo suggest a desire to attract attention to unequal power relations and a consequent desire to celebrate these women.

Keywords: Allende, Feminism, Latin American Literature, Magical Realism, Narrative, Postmodernism