First Half Overview

I’ve enjoyed this course a lot – because of the works themselves, how they are presented, and our ways of responding to them. I like how they were selected. Not only do they represent a variety of countries and literary styles, but each makes a vivid and distinct contribution to our understanding of the family, while at the same time providing fuel for other discussions. As we follow the lives of our demure and deranged families, we’ve also touched upon topics like nationalism, subalternity, gender roles, nature, class values, and anxieties of the modern age. The only odd one out is Neruda, who was enjoyable to read and discuss, but seems more engaged in feminine contours and his own experience of artistic awakening than anything to do with the family. Any ideas about his place in the course?

There are a few improvements that could be made, but these are all limited by time, so I think the course does a good balancing act between the various factors. For example, a number of people have said that they would like know more historical context, which would be great if the course was longer, but I think that doing a bit of background research outside of class would be better than cutting down on time that new connections and observations can be made about the novel itself. Also, I did find it a challenge to read so much in a short period of time and a bit frustrating to move on from each one so quickly, but then again, it was great to be exposed to such a variety of works. This course so far has been informative and enjoyable, and if the whirlwind tour and unusual selections of the first half didn’t do it for some people, we have the entire second half to explore a masterpiece at leisure.

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Piedra Callada

There could not be two more different portraits of family life than those described by Theresa de la Parra in Memorias de Mamá Blanca and by Marta Brunet in “Piedra callada”. The first takes place in Eden; the protagonists exist in an idyllic state before sickness, injustice, and want. Nature is beautiful and fertile, the girls embrace it with imagination and wonder, and it yields a variety of goods to the family. When a death occurs, such as that of the calf, it does so peacefully. The family is ideal, the girls are pretty and bright, they adore their mother and respect their father. They live a life free of hardship.

The second takes place in an environment of entrapment, antagonism, and manipulation. The family is a group of creatures snarling, consuming, procreating, and perishing their way through a world determined by the survival-of-the-fittest. Nature is a volatile element that produces obstacles and danger, and it must be laboured upon to provide sustenance for the family. The protagonists are at the bottom of the social hierarchy, ragged and neglected children, a dumb brute of a man, an older woman without support, and a poor girl physically destroyed by multiple unhealthy childbirths. Nothing in life comes easily, and the characters react to their circumstances with explosive and poisonous anger or silent conniving to secure personal interests at any cost.

Still, the families are similar in their essential roles and power relations. For example, the role of child bearer dominates the character of the mothers, from the doomed Esperanza, unable to avoid pregnancy and unable to continue giving birth, to the mother of Blanca Nieves, who leaves the hacienda periodically and exclusively for this purpose. The children, mostly nameless, roam around in packs. The role of the fathers is the unequivocal master of the house. Both are men of few words, but these dominate over everyone, and neither touches domestic affairs such as raising children or tidying the household.

However, an important factor limits making simple comparisons of the two families, one beautiful and the other basic. The first story focuses on the experience of children and the second on the experience of adults. Leaving aside differences in the standard of living between the children of both stories, they are all reasonably happy. However, we know very little about the parents of Blanca Nieves. Why, for example, do we never hear them speak to one another? Perhaps if the memories in this story were those of an adult, there would have been just as much manipulation, competition, and animosity at Piedra Azul. It all depends on perspective.

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Memorias de Mamá Blanca

Instead of talking about just the second half of the novel, I want to talk about something I noticed that affects it as a whole. In class on Wednesday, Memorias de Mamá Blanca was introduced as a return, both in terms of the course, to the heart of the family and the experience of women, and within the novel itself, as we encounter Mamá Blanca then delve into the childhood described in her memoir. However, this sensation of returning that we have when reading the novel, of revisiting a closed era and viewing it with present knowledge, is dependent on a single editorial decision.

A footnote is attached to the title of the first chapter which informs the reader of variations between editions. The most significant variation is that in some editions (like this one) this text is the first chapter, while in others it is the prologue, in some editions it is located at the end of the novel, but in others it is excluded entirely. This decision, made by the various editors who were responsible for these editions, has a huge impact on our perception of the novel as it unfolds. In this edition we encounter Mamá Blanca in the first chapter, a spirited elderly lady who enchants a young girl with her floral society and conversation over cake, but there is also a hint of sadness due to events that brought about her current poverty and distance between herself and family. So from the second chapter and onwards, we are not merely reading humorous and tender anecdotes describing the escapades of little girls, but we are looking, as if down a well, into the past from the vantage point in the first chapter, and we read with a certain degree of apprehension because we know that these girls will grow up and apart, their universe will fracture, and Blanca Nieves will become this woman we know as Mamá Blanca, caught up in nostalgic rapture on her untuned piano. We would watch a film about the Titanic differently, the story that takes place on board would do so in an entirely different light, if we didn’t know that it was doomed to sink. It is only in the last chapter that we get the bitter taste of the fall from Eden, that we see the universe of the little princesses shatter into pieces, and experience the yearning to revisit in those mental photographs what was once tactile and encompassing. Because that first chapter appears as it does in our edition, the book forms something of a circle, both ends are linked with a sense of nostalgia that spanned a lifetime.

According to Marina Gálvez Acero, the editor of this edition, it is “imprescindible para una correcta lectura de la obra" that it be presented in this format. So this is how we read the novel, returning to the past rather than finding ourselves immediately within it, and our perceptions are thus altered. As well, we have to remeber that what we read has been subjected to the tyrannies of a fictional editor, one who has taken the memoirs of Mamá Blanca and reproduced them unfaithfully, cleaning them up and straightening them out, cutting them short. And of course, as this is a memoir, it is likely that Mamá Blanca took her own liberties with the facts, exaggerating some and eliminating others. Somewhere within this are pieces of truth about a fictional life, the life of Blanca Nieves, and as the events of the novel share some similarity with the life of the author, Teresa de la Parra, there are also fragments of a real life. Unlike what is claimed in the final pages - "los recuerdos no cambian" - the novel seems to suggest that memories are prone to take on different qualities over time and that once commited to paper, can become altogether different.

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