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reaperreads's review against another edition
4.0
I fell behind with Winterween, but I'm still going to finish reading all I planned to read for the readathon over the course of January. House of Mist was a part of that TBR and has been on my shelf since roughly 2017. In one of the five classes I took with my favorite Literary Studies professor, we were assigned The Shrouded Woman, which makes up only half of this volume. I've been wanting to read House of Mist ever since, but I became averse to reading anything that smelled of literary-ness after I decided I didn't care enough about literary criticism to continue pursuing it as a career. I presented at one conference and felt that that was enough. But, recently, I have found myself craving it a little bit--that type of writing that always has a wink from the author just beyond the page but never explicit in its contents. So much of what I read now lays the capital-P Point so bare that I almost want to avert my gaze and hand it a bathrobe.
House of Mist gave me exactly what I wanted.
. . . to live a great love, with its joys and its pains, and to die from it, might well be a destiny assigned by God to certain people.
On its surface, it appears to extol virtuous waifs and condemn adulterous nobles. But that could only be our interpretation if we believe one character and ignore the internalized misogyny of another.
House of Mist is about a young girl named Helga who from a young age is quite taken with fairy tales as well as a neighbor named Daniel. Daniel, however, is in love with Helga's cousin Teresa and eventually marries her with a little help from Helga, who keeps her love silent for a great deal of the novel. But when Teresa, a new wife at the time, drowns in a swamp on Daniel's hacienda, Daniel asks Helga to marry him anyway in an effort to rekindle the love he felt for her cousin.
The marriage is all about what he wants, and, as we know, want comes from lack. The void left behind by Teresa is something Daniel seeks to fill with Helga, and the aching sensation of Teresa's absence can be seen everywhere in the short novel. Folks who work on the hacienda see Teresa's ghost in the swamp every night, searching for her lost wedding ring. A thick mist enshrouds the hacienda, contributing to the degradation of the house and its contents. Daniel himself, the most potent manifestation of grief, is almost constantly furious with Helga when he isn't tormenting her with insults about how she looks (supposedly thin and ugly) and her perceived lack of intellect.
In search of happiness, Helga recedes into her dreams and fantasies while relishing anything, even the comforting touch of a stranger, that proves happiness exists in reality, outside of her reveries. The line between the two, though, becomes quite blurred as the story moves forward, through the tandem influences of apparent lucid dreaming and flagrant gaslighting (seriously, fuck Daniel). I think this is why Bombal is lauded as an author who "anticipated the magical realism that has come to fascinate an international public." While I don't think there is necessarily much overt magical realism in House of Mist in particular, there are moments that, no matter how Helga tries to explain them to herself, that still don't make a whole lot of sense. See, not only does her perception of a border between reality and dreams become quite murky, but so does her individuality as a distinct human being separate from the consciousness of others. As she tries to tell her story to the reader, characters other than herself are persistently trying to manipulate it and reshape her to suit their own desires. She is the epitome of the naivete that was thrust upon her as a young society lady, so even her gullibility isn't her own. She's a mess of stories, all serving others and never serving herself.
And the one important moment that she decides to serve herself . . . well, it gets warped beyond recognition the more people who insert themselves into it.
I could go on, but I'm running out of laptop battery and am too lazy to get off the couch to plug this thing in. So, I'm going to leave you with this quote:
What a glorious achievement it would be for humanity to understand that each one of us has within himself a well into which he can descend during sleep and by means of which he can escape into infinity!
I hope that, whoever you are who decides to read this book, you train yourself to question the simplicity of the gothic romance and see Helga for who she truly is: a storyteller.
And Daniel for who he truly is: a twat.
(This is also a great book for a queer reading. So much SUBTEXT.)
For fans of: Apple and Knife by Intan Paramaditha, Comfort Me with Apples by Catherynne M. Valente, The Youngest Doll by Rosario Ferré, Passing by Nella Larsen, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, We Spread by Iain Reid
House of Mist gave me exactly what I wanted.
. . . to live a great love, with its joys and its pains, and to die from it, might well be a destiny assigned by God to certain people.
On its surface, it appears to extol virtuous waifs and condemn adulterous nobles. But that could only be our interpretation if we believe one character and ignore the internalized misogyny of another.
House of Mist is about a young girl named Helga who from a young age is quite taken with fairy tales as well as a neighbor named Daniel. Daniel, however, is in love with Helga's cousin Teresa and eventually marries her with a little help from Helga, who keeps her love silent for a great deal of the novel. But when Teresa, a new wife at the time, drowns in a swamp on Daniel's hacienda, Daniel asks Helga to marry him anyway in an effort to rekindle the love he felt for her cousin.
The marriage is all about what he wants, and, as we know, want comes from lack. The void left behind by Teresa is something Daniel seeks to fill with Helga, and the aching sensation of Teresa's absence can be seen everywhere in the short novel. Folks who work on the hacienda see Teresa's ghost in the swamp every night, searching for her lost wedding ring. A thick mist enshrouds the hacienda, contributing to the degradation of the house and its contents. Daniel himself, the most potent manifestation of grief, is almost constantly furious with Helga when he isn't tormenting her with insults about how she looks (supposedly thin and ugly) and her perceived lack of intellect.
In search of happiness, Helga recedes into her dreams and fantasies while relishing anything, even the comforting touch of a stranger, that proves happiness exists in reality, outside of her reveries. The line between the two, though, becomes quite blurred as the story moves forward, through the tandem influences of apparent lucid dreaming and flagrant gaslighting (seriously, fuck Daniel). I think this is why Bombal is lauded as an author who "anticipated the magical realism that has come to fascinate an international public." While I don't think there is necessarily much overt magical realism in House of Mist in particular, there are moments that, no matter how Helga tries to explain them to herself, that still don't make a whole lot of sense. See, not only does her perception of a border between reality and dreams become quite murky, but so does her individuality as a distinct human being separate from the consciousness of others. As she tries to tell her story to the reader, characters other than herself are persistently trying to manipulate it and reshape her to suit their own desires. She is the epitome of the naivete that was thrust upon her as a young society lady, so even her gullibility isn't her own. She's a mess of stories, all serving others and never serving herself.
And the one important moment that she decides to serve herself . . . well, it gets warped beyond recognition the more people who insert themselves into it.
I could go on, but I'm running out of laptop battery and am too lazy to get off the couch to plug this thing in. So, I'm going to leave you with this quote:
What a glorious achievement it would be for humanity to understand that each one of us has within himself a well into which he can descend during sleep and by means of which he can escape into infinity!
I hope that, whoever you are who decides to read this book, you train yourself to question the simplicity of the gothic romance and see Helga for who she truly is: a storyteller.
And Daniel for who he truly is: a twat.
(This is also a great book for a queer reading. So much SUBTEXT.)
For fans of: Apple and Knife by Intan Paramaditha, Comfort Me with Apples by Catherynne M. Valente, The Youngest Doll by Rosario Ferré, Passing by Nella Larsen, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, We Spread by Iain Reid
ssllvvsstt's review against another edition
5.0
No one dies from love
Guess I'll be the first
Will you remember us?
Or are the memories too stained with blood now?
Claramente Tove Lo se inspiró en La Amortajada para escribir No One Dies From Love
Guess I'll be the first
Will you remember us?
Or are the memories too stained with blood now?
Claramente Tove Lo se inspiró en La Amortajada para escribir No One Dies From Love
diargiron's review against another edition
5.0
Una prosa bellísima, Maria Luisa Bombal tiene un talento increíble para las palabras y las imágenes. Me fascina la claridad, belleza y sentimiento articulados en sus oraciones, de un deje muy espiritual y al mismo tiempo muy humano, casi místico. La desesperación y tragedia y resignación y el arrebato de las vivencias femeninas. Quiero leer más de la autora
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