Magical Realism in The House of the Spirits
Influences of Magical Realism in *The House of the Spirits*
Isabel Allende is part of the artistic phenomenon that followed the *boom* of Magical Realism, and was renamed the New Narrative or *post-boom*, referring to novels written around 1980.
Inherited Characteristics of Magical Realism
Isabel Allende responds to the expectations of readers dazzled by the Hispanic *boom*, using inherited characteristics of magical realism. In *The House of the Spirits*, we foresee an eerie atmosphere, particularly in the Del Valle residence and in their daughters, Rosa, with her white skin and long green hair, and Clara, a sleepwalker immersed in an inner world. This is described when she decides to stop talking (in her house, objects have their own life and speak; the laws of physics or logic do not always work; the prosaic truth of material things blends with the truth of tumultuous dreams…)
In *The House of the Spirits*, we find the four types of events of Magical Realism indicated to study the works of García Márquez:
- The magical
- The miraculous
- The fantastical
- The mythical and legendary
According to Isabel Allende, it is not a matter of the fantasy of fairy tales, but the inclusion in the story of imagination and the esoteric to better explain and feel reality, since all of this together is part of it. On the other hand, episodes and quite rational, everyday facts are taken by the characters as extraordinary.
Characteristics of Magical Realism in *The House of the Spirits*
Other characteristics of magical realism that we see in *The House of the Spirits*, always in an attenuated form, are:
- Multiple narrators: combining first and third-person narrative to give different perspectives to the same idea and complexity to the text (See “The point of view and narrators in *The House of the Spirits*”)
- Polyphony: different disturbing and ambiguous views offer us a simultaneously complex reality. The reader does not know what to expect, does not know the border between imagination and reality, and is part of a new and magical reality formed by the sum of the realities of the different voices that appear in the story.
- Non-linear narrative structures with frequent temporary breaks: The past will be repeated or resembled. The post-boom moderates this feature to make it accessible to the reader (see “Time in *The House of the Spirits*”).
The Post-Boom: The New Narrative
In the post-boom, three marginal axes burst forth, which characterize the new work, more focused, and show a reality dominated by poverty, underdevelopment, or dictatorships:
- Realistic witness (it’s all pure reality)
- Popular culture (massive presence of features of Hispanic culture)
- Feminism (important role of women in the work, representing the women’s struggle for freedom)
Post-Boom Characteristics
Post-boom characteristics are easily recognizable:
- Realistic nature of literature (including some elements of popular literature)
- Recurrence of memory (use of historical topics)
- The boundaries between reality and fiction blur (magical items are everyday, but with less prominence than in Magical Realism)
- Elements of youth culture (drugs, sex, etc.)
- Presence of love and humor (items of everyday communication, especially absurd traits)
- Female protagonists