uAs many of you might know, I am studying abroad in Chile for Spring Semester. My semester starts rather late (25 Feb to be exact), but that leaves me plenty of time to read up on my future destination. I learned recently that Chilean author Isabel Allende based part of her novel "Daughter of Fortune" in Valparíso, the city I will be living in.
Reading Allende reminded me a lot of Marquez in "One Hundred Years of Solitude". It had the same mystical aura about it, but kept on a more realistic level than Marquez. Valparíso serves as a parallel to San Francisco as a place of many different cultures struggling to fit together. In fact, in the guide books I've read, they describe Valparíso as "Little San Francisco". The main character lives with an English family, has a Mapuche (type of native in Chile) nanny, and falls for a Chilean boy. The guide books also mention a heavy German influence, not present in the novel. This book was beautifully written and not predictable in the least.
This book filled me with a variety of emotions. It piqued my interest about my future home, while also making me yearn for my past home (many characters move to California in the gold rush). As a period novel, based between 1830s-1850s, there is a lot of repression and negativity towards women. Smart women are scorned and ambitious women are looked as hookers.
My two favorite characters were the sailor John Sommers and the business woman Paulina Rodríguez de Santa Cruz. As a captain, John Sommers lives the ideal life. He travels all over the world, meets many people, and brings home wonderful treasures. He is stricter than most captains, pulling a tight rein over his crew, but that only adds to his reputation. Paulina is a modern woman stuck in the 1800s. Exiled from her family for falling for someone of lower class, Paulina starts off struggling to survive. Always a woman for business, she instructs her husband to set up a bank account and deliver fresh food over to the gold miners for profit. By far the strongest woman of the book, she never takes no for an answer.
Some of my favorite quotes:
"What matters is what you do in this world, not how you come into it" p. 5, presenting the first theme of nature vs. nurture
"You and I both know that my nature is more savage than yours" p. 13, Rose Sommers response to her brother Jeremy's statement of man's savage nature and woman's destiny to preserve moral values and good conduct
"Size has nothing to do with it, man. It's balls that count." p. 299, presenting the second theme of breaking masculine and feminine boundaries
No comments:
Post a Comment