The House of Spirits

Isabel Allende she is the author of The House of Spirits, one of the most acclaimed novels in Latin American literature and that is most studied in schools and institutes. We are facing an exciting work that has a strong political content introduced in a subtle and metaphorical way. Magic, love and destiny go hand in hand in this novel that tells us about three generations of the Trueba family. In this lesson from a TEACHER we want to show you a complete summary of The House of Spirits so you can discover this story in greater depth and enjoy one of the top works in Latin America.

Index

1. Introduction to The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
2. Summary of The House of Spirits: Part One
3. Second part of The House of Spirits
4. The end of the house of the spirits
5. Historical context of the work

The Chilean writer Isabel Allende She surprised the literary sector with the publication of her first novel that catapulted her to success immediately. We talk about

This novel has been translated into a wide variety of languages ​​and even has a film adaptation of the hand of Bille August in which prominent actors such as Antonio Banderas, Meryl Streep or Winona worked Rider.

The House of the Spirits is a novel that is framed within the current of the magical realism, an aesthetic movement typical of Latin American literature and whose founder is Gabriel García Márquez with his unforgettable One hundred years of loneliness. In this novel by Allende we also find this aesthetic as unlikely situations are joined with the most everyday reality.

This novel reviews the lives of 4 generations of the same family that, in turn, are witnesses of the political changes of Chile in its post-colonial era.

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We already start with the summary of The House of Spirits so that you can get into this novel better and get to know the plot and the characters in depth.

The story begins with the death of Marcos, Clara del Valle's uncle and who began to write a diary that same day. At 50 years after this happened, Esteban, Clara's husband and her granddaughter review the history of the family, beginning with the life of Clara and her sister Rosa.

Clara has the gift of clairvoyance And because of that, she can know what the future holds, both for herself and the people with whom she surrounds herself. Her sister Rosa de ella, who marries Esteban, ends up being poisoned because of a mistake since the person she wanted to kill was her father, Severo del Valle. Rosa dies and Clara, faced with this trauma so difficult to manage, decides not to speak again.

With the years, Esteban manages to make a fortune on the Tres Marías farm and he becomes a man equally respected and feared. She harasses the women in the area and exploits their workers. Clara will end up marrying Esteban and will move to this farm. From this union Blanca, the daughter of the marriage, will be born.

When White, the daughter, she grows older she meets for a summer to Peter the Third, a worker with a communist thought who is against Esteban's management. Blanca and Pedro will fall in love. Clara, the mother, becomes pregnant again with Esteban but, this time, she has twins whom she calls by the names of Jaime and Nicolás.

Férula, Esteban's sister, also lives with the couple and she begins to feel possessive love for Clara. She is the one who has always accompanied her while Esteban spent the day in the field so she begins to feel a strong rejection towards her brother. In the end, Esteban will kick her sister out of her house because one night he will find her sleeping in Clara's bed.

The relationship between Blanca's daughter and the worker Pedro progresses over time. It's a impossible love since, in addition to belonging to different social classes, Pedro has an ideology totally contrary to the father of his girlfriend.

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We continue this summary of The House of Spirits to continue with what can be considered as the second part.

The young couple in love starring Blanca and Pedro keep going. But a new character in discord: Jean de Satigny. He is a professional in the commercial sector who is highly valued and Esteban wants to marry his daughter. But, of course, the young woman will not want to and, in a fit of anger, Esteban will try to kill Pedro and beat Clara, his wife. Due to this event, Clara will not speak to her husband again. At this time, Esteban began to serve as a member of the Conservative Party and, in the end, he was elected to a post for Congress.

Years later, Blanca will get pregnant But her father will end up telling her that he has murdered her boyfriend in order to force her to marry the man he had chosen for her: Jean de Satigny. The girl accepts her father's proposal but, a few months after marrying, she discovers that her new husband has very strange sexual fantasies that she does not feel comfortable with. So she breaks up with him and goes home to give birth to his daughter whom he baptizes with the name of Alba.

Alba, Esteban and Clara's granddaughter, will create a very intimate and close relationship with her grandfather; in fact, he will be the only character who has a close and loving relationship with this man. Alba is convinced that Jean de Satigny is her father but, one day, she will meet Pedro Tercero and will begin to befriend him clandestinely.

Clara, the grandmother, dies and Alba turns 18. He starts going to university to continue his studies and here she will meet Miguel, a young rebel who is anti-conservative and activist. At this time, the political situation in Chile is changing and the Socialists win the elections. That's when we see that Pedro Tercero is part of the government.

Due to this change of course in the history of the country, Esteban's workers take him hostage. But this situation is solved by Pedro Tercero who will end up saving this man who, in the past, was his enemy. Despite this, Esteban will continue in his project of defeating the socialists and will even prepare a military coup. Miguel, Alba's boyfriend, will join the fight against the coup plotters while Pedro Tercero will hide in the house of Clara, her old love and Esteban's daughter.

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We finish this summary of The House of Spirits to talk about the end of the novel. Esteban is satisfied by the military coup that he has staged with his colleagues from the party. But he will realize that it is not enough for the conservatives to rule again, but what the country needs is a dictatorship.

In the end, Esteban will help both Blanca as Pedro Tercero go into exile to Canada. One of the officers of this new dictatorship will arrest Alba, Esteban's beloved granddaughter. The reason for the arrest is to know where his boyfriend Miguel is hiding, since he is one of the most wanted rebels.

Esteban wants to find her granddaughter so that they do not kill her and, for this, he will go to Tránsito Soto, an old brothel woman with whom Esteban had relations with in his younger days. Transit tells him not to worry about his granddaughter as she will be coming home.

When Alba and Esteban meet to write the history of the Trueba family, Esteban will die.

It is important that we briefly relate The House of Spirits with his historical and political context, since the novel must be understood in this plane.

We accompany the history of the Trueba family but, at the same time, we attend the history that took place in Chile for several years. The so unequal and authoritarian class society that can be seen in the novel also existed in Chile, a country in which scarcity was rife and in which wealth accumulated in very small groups of people. In this novel, Esteban Trueba is the character that best portrays those new capitalists arisen in Chile and that, over time, they ended up in power.

The character of Pedro Tercero is very close to Víctor Jara since the story that we are told about him is closely aligned with that of this Chilean character. They sang and composed protest songs and pursued an ideal of socialism and equality. The difference between the two stories is that Jara was killed while Pedro Tercero manages to flee to Canada.

In the house of the spirits appears General Hertado, a character that critics have linked to Augusto Pinochet. In both cases, the characters only want to come to power to be richer and more powerful; Pinochet destroyed the socialist president, but in Allende's novel, what he does is bet everything on a conservative regime.

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