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Esteban is finally visited by Clara's spirit, who has come to help the old man on to the next world. Blanca sits outside and ponders her life, looking forward to a future with Pedro and their daughter. She reflects on how she does not want to live her life with anger or hatred—instead, she wishes to move forward and be happy.
Blanca Trueba
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The novel ends with Esteban's death, and Alba sits alone in the vast Trueba mansion beside his body. The last paragraph reveals that she is pregnant, although she does not know (or care) whether the child is Miguel's or the product of the rapes that she endured at the hands of security police, during her imprisonment. The story is told mainly from the perspective of two protagonists (Esteban and Alba) and incorporates elements of magical realism.
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He does, however, believe that Pancha’s son is his, but still refuses to acknowledge any “bastard offspring.” To avoid such drama in the future, Esteban visits a local brothel where he meets a prostitute named Tránsito Soto. She has big dreams and asks Esteban to borrow her 50 pesos to help make them happen. Esteban doesn’t know what she will do with the money, but he is fond of Tránsito, so he gives it to her. After her death, Esteban decides to fulfill her dying wish for him to marry and have legitimate children.
Severo and Nívea del Valle
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Isabel Allende
Blanca's mother, Clara del Valle is a child from a well-off family in Santiago whose father is running for the Senate. Clara possesses clairvoyant abilities and foresees her own marriage to Esteban Trueba, a miner. While living in Chile in the 1960s, Allende worked translating English romance novels into Spanish. She was ultimately fired for making unauthorized changes to the books, however, when she was caught rewriting female characters to make them smarter and more independent. Some of the characters' names are significant, particularly the women's names, which often indicate the personalities of the characters.
Analysis of Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits
Esteban immediately goes to work fixing up the main house, rebuilding the barns, and planting the fields. Directing the peasants, Esteban laughs at the idea of “class struggle”—he believes the peasants are lost without a strong patrón like him to guide them. Esteban builds a schoolhouse and a general store, and he even builds brick houses for the peasants, which is unheard of on other estates. Esteban feels that he needs a woman, so he rapes a peasant girl named Pancha García. After this, he is so busy working and raping other peasant women that he is the last to notice Pancha’s pregnancy. Many peasant women claim that Esteban has fathered their children, but he doesn’t believe them.
More books from this author: Isabel Allende
He becomes isolated from every member of his family except for little Alba, whom he is very fond of. Esteban runs as a senator for the Conservative Party but is nervous about whether or not he will win. Clara speaks to him, through signs, informing him that "those who have always won will win again" – this becomes his motto.
Esteban Trueba, for example, bears little resemblance to Allende’s memories of her grandfather. The resemblance between Allende’s relatives and her fictional characters persists, however. At her mother’s urging, for example, Allende altered the name of Alba’s father, for the author had unconsciously given the character one of her own father’s surnames. A visiting French count to the hacienda, Jean de Satigny, reveals Blanca's nightly romps with Pedro Tercero to her father. When Clara expresses horror at his actions, Esteban slaps her, knocking out her front teeth.
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Esteban throws Férula out of the house when he catches her and Clara asleep in the same bed. Esteban uses the gold he found from mining to buy a hacienda, Tres Marías. He employs natives to work as peasants on the dilapidated land, eventually turning Tres Marías into a successful estate through his use of brute force. One day while horseback riding through the countryside, he sees a peasant girl, Pancha García.
Through a combination of intimidation and reward, he enforces respect and labor from the fearful peasants and turns Tres Marías into a "model hacienda". He turns the first peasant who spoke to him upon arrival, Pedro Segundo, into his foreman, who quickly becomes the closest thing that Trueba ever has to an actual friend during his life. He rapes many of the peasant women and children, and his first victim, then 15 year old Pancha García, becomes the mother of his bastard son, Esteban García.
He also spends nights with Tránsito, a local prostitute to whom he lends money so she can start a new career in the capital. Their platonic, familial love, however, is not the only passion portrayed in the novel; sexual, romantic love also abounds. The book proceeds through its several generations of women with reflective names, from Nívea to her daughters Rosa and Clara to Clara’s daughter Blanca and finally to Alba, with an examination of the rewards and difficulties of passion. She has famously stated that The House of the Spirits began as a letter to her grandfather, and the book does encapsulate elements of her own family. Allende’s writing quickly turned from an epistolary form to imaginative fiction. Indeed, though many of the characters are based on members of Allende’s family, they do not represent the reality of those people.
Using an unnamed country in the novel, but easily recognizable as Allende’s homeland of Chile, The House of the Spirits examines the social changes and governmental actions leading to the development of the country’s dictatorship. From the feminist changes advocated by Nívea to the communist government preceding the military takeover and vehemently despised by Esteban, the novel presents a segment of the history of the author’s country. The book’s primary vehicle for that historical progression is Esteban Trueba, who unifies the various generations of women presented. He marries Nívea’s daughter Clara, having first loved and lost her other daughter; he provides his daughter Blanca with somewhat dubious parenting; and he protects and loves his granddaughter, Alba. Alba, however, breaks the cycle of hatred and revenge perpetuated by Esteban García.
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