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Matriarchs Are The Most Influential Characters In Matriarchs Are The Most Influential Characters In The Novels One Hundred Years Of Solitude And Th 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, and Clara Trueba from House of Spirits 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 Maria's 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 Maria's. 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. g Esteban 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 husbands 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 Maria's in the case of Esteban I was going to spend many years perhaps even my whole life Tres Maria's. 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 Maria's 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 authors 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 un whitewashed 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 husbands weak influences in the domestic area to fight their husbands dominance and therefore they use time and familiarity as tools. Over time the households 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 rest 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.
v The 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. s The 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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