In The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, Estaban falls in love with Rosa and then Clara because they are beautiful and he longs for a wife. Clara able to predict the future through prophecies and dream interpretations, but her husband only sees her beauty. Feminism is evident as women are only admired for their beauty, not their intelligence. To begin with, women are admired for their beauty. Rosa del Valle, Clara’s sister, was so beautiful that she was known as “a heavenly being” (Allende 16). In a mostly Catholic society, being compared to a heavenly being is a big deal. She was put on the same level as angels or even God. She “tied up traffic” wherever she went as men stopped to admire her good looks (35). People are risking being in an accident just to watch her so she
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Nivea bathes, dresses, massages, and feeds Clara, who is perfectly capable, until she became an “angelic being who walked through the halls and patios wrapped in a scent of flowers … and a halo of curls and ribbons” (102). Nivea hopes that a suitor might overlook Clara’s oddities if she were beautiful. So she works to indulge her daughter and encourage her to take care of her personal hygiene. As soon as Clara became a mother, she coddled Blanca until she was an “almost pretty child who bore no resemblance at all to the armadillo she had been at birth” (124). It was alarming for Clara to see her child covered in hair because she looked hideous. So she indulged her child until she was intelligent and pretty. Oftentimes, women scorned upon if they are strange or especially intelligent. Frula was “a beautiful woman…. but already the ugliness of resignation could be glimpsed through her pale, peach-toned skin and her eyes full of shadows” (57). Frula threw away her life to help others, but her own brother throws her out of the house because he is jealous of the attention she is giving his beautiful
Nivea bathes, dresses, massages, and feeds Clara, who is perfectly capable, until she became an “angelic being who walked through the halls and patios wrapped in a scent of flowers … and a halo of curls and ribbons” (102). Nivea hopes that a suitor might overlook Clara’s oddities if she were beautiful. So she works to indulge her daughter and encourage her to take care of her personal hygiene. As soon as Clara became a mother, she coddled Blanca until she was an “almost pretty child who bore no resemblance at all to the armadillo she had been at birth” (124). It was alarming for Clara to see her child covered in hair because she looked hideous. So she indulged her child until she was intelligent and pretty. Oftentimes, women scorned upon if they are strange or especially intelligent. Frula was “a beautiful woman…. but already the ugliness of resignation could be glimpsed through her pale, peach-toned skin and her eyes full of shadows” (57). Frula threw away her life to help others, but her own brother throws her out of the house because he is jealous of the attention she is giving his beautiful