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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