The major characters in The House of the Spirits come from two opposing classes: the landed aristocracy and the peasants. Most of the population of Latin America, as well as all of the characters in the novel, belong to one of these two classes. Essentially the only other class distinction that might be drawn is that occupied by those in civil service. Peasants can join the police force or the army and gain access to education and a higher class status, which is the case of Esteban Garcia. The del Valle and Trueba families represent the land-owning upper-class criollos (a criollo is a person who is born and raised in South America but is a direct descendant of Spaniards), while the Garcias represent the peasants. The two classes come into conflict because one (upper) owns the land that the other (lower) works on. Especially in rural areas such as Tres Marias, the upper classes control all of the infrastructure, such as schools, transportation, banks, and hospitals, as well as all of the capital. As the upper classes prosper, conflict mounts when that prosperity is not equally distributed.

a b c d Fox, David J. (4 April 1994). " 'House of Spirits' Fails to Levitate: Movies: The star-studded film does poorly in its U.S. opening, despite heavy publicity and strong European sales". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016 . Retrieved 10 March 2021. a b "The House of the Spirits (1994)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on 14 June 2021 . Retrieved 10 March 2021. Personally, this book, especially the final chapters, really hit me hard. Although it took me several days to read it, I will be remembering this story for a long time. The film won multiple awards: Bavarian Film Awards, German Film Awards, the Golden Screen (Germany), Havana Film Festival, and Robert Awards (Denmark), the German Phono Academy, and the Guild of German Art House Cinemas. [12]When I was a kid, me and my brother used to spend most weekends at our grandparents house. And most of those weekends we would watch one of the same two movies on the good ol' VCR: Steel Magnolias and The House of the Spirits. No one seems to know the latter movie when I mention it, but it starred a bunch of impressive names: Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Antonio Banderas and Winona Ryder. My memory might be painting a better picture than the truth, but me and my brother LOVED the movie.

Ms. Allende', who to my mind should soon be Chile's 3d Nobel Laureate in Literature, wrote the novel based loosely on her own family and nation. The novel's fictional characters and events follow closely the lives and times of Chile, Pinochet and Salvadore Allende, her first cousin (once removed), who was Chile's socialist president at the time of the coup d'etat. Reports conflict over whether he was assassinated or committed suicide shortly after the coup commenced. House of the Spirits started my love affair with Isabel Allende's writing twenty years ago. I remember how the first line "Barrabas came to us from the sea" left me captivated and eager to read on. In college, I was fortunate that La Casa de los Espiritus was required reading for one of my classes, so I read the prose a second time in Spanish. Allende's writing is exceptional in both languages. We talk about magical realism a lot; that's a patronizing term meaning that it's just like real literature except with magic. It's patronizing to fantasy books, not to South Americans, although to be fair most fantasy is pretty lame. The defining magical realism book is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude (Colombia, 1967), which is - did I mention this? - boring. Penalva, Joanna. "Arts & Culture: Department of Drama Presents ‘The House of the Spirits’," Syracuse University News (November 7, 2017). There are many kinds of life that makes you rush to death But nothing worse than our fear from fear itself and our novel here is about: fighting deathAsí que esta semana tendré que buscar tiempo además para ver la película que se rodó sobre la novela, con un elenco de actores de primera magnitud, encabezados por Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Antonio Banderas y Wynona Ryder (ahí es nada), aunque con el inconveniente de sus 2 horas y media de duración. Esteban Trueba.....hmmm, he is a monster (I think). Though does he ultimately redeem himself? Clara....a wonderful character, who I wanted to hear more about and her talents. The book touches on magical realism and it was done perfectly, weaved into the lives of each of the Trueba family members. The love between Blanca and Pedro Tercero García....epic. Throw in a government political coup. Oh I want to hear more and more about these wonderful characters. In The Soul of a Woman, Allende paints a beatific picture of life in her 70s – “I am in a splendid moment of my destiny,” she writes. She tells me she is a natural optimist and, having seen great change in her lifetime for women, believes that men and women will, in time, have power in equal numbers. Ending the patriarchy, she says, will require “a jump in evolution. It will be a completely different civilisation, and I will not see it. Like all revolutions, we start with great anger and a feeling of injustice that we need to make things right. And we fight like crazy without always knowing where we are going. But you continue to work for that final goal, and it will be achieved. We will do it, I’m sure.”

It has all the right ingredients for a formidable tale. One of those that satisfies and at the same time you want more. Ferula is my favourite, but she is one in a sea of very different and interesting individuals. There is, of course, Esteban Trueba. He is violent, selfish and earns very little sympathy from me over the course of the novel; that's not to say he isn't of interest, because he certainly is. And there's his wife - Clara - a woman prone to bouts of clairvoyance that have dictated the direction of her life; a direction she has accepted without complaint. Then there's Blanca, Esteban and Clara's daughter, who falls in love with Pedro Tercero against her father's wishes and constantly defies him by pursuing the relationship. Angle Errigo of Empire gave The House of the Spirits two out of five stars and stated that: "If this had been a Latin American production, one might have been more generous towards the fumblings of a fairly fetching saga; given the talents involved, the film's hesitations in style and consistent failure to really move must be counted as a major disappointment." [11] Awards and nominations [ edit ] More important, Esteban’s development—for he does not remain a static, misogynist, imperious aristocrat for the entirety of his life—mimics the country’s conservative attitude toward its own social change and sequential governments. At first glance, Esteban appears to be a typical landed aristocrat: He rules his peasants with unfl inching and sometimes brutal control and arrogance, to the point of raping the powerless women inhabiting his lands. This general abuse of the lower classes and more specific abuse of women are the result of generations of social strife and a cyclical pattern of hatred and violence. Esteban also fathers an illegitimate son, ironically named after him, and detests his daughter’s alliance with Pedro Tercero García, her lover and a singer of radical songs.One of the most successful contemporary Latin American woman novelists, Isabel Allende was born in 1942. Although she was born in Lima, Peru, Allende is Chilean. As a child, she traveled throughout Latin America and beyond, thanks to her father and stepfather's diplomatic careers. In 1962, Isabel Allende married Manuel Frias. Allende soon gave birth to their daughter Paula and their son Nicolas. Allende worked as a journalist for a number of magazines and newspapers in Chile beginning in 1967. Her uncle Salvador Allende became, in 1970, the first socialist to be elected president of Chile. In 1973 Salvador Allende was assassinated in a military coup led by General Augusta Pinochet. Due to increasing political tensions in Chile, in 1975, Allende and her family fled to Venezuela. She lived there for thirteen years, continuing to work as a journalist, and beginning to write novels. In 1987, Allende and Frias were divorced. A year later, Allende married Willie Gordon in San Francisco and settled down in nearby San Rafael, California. In 1992, her daughter Paula died of porphyria. The film premiered in Germany in October 1993 as a 145-minute theatrical cut that was also released in Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Scandinavia. [7] The film was released in the United States on April 1, 1994 in a 132-minute cut version. [7] Reception [ edit ] Her mother remarried to Ramón Huidobro, also a diplomat, and the family moved often as his posts changed. Allende said she was determined to work as a young woman and started her writing career as a journalist. She became a prominent journalist working in television and for magazines in the 1960s and 1970s. Literary Work Author Isabel Allende received numerous offers from producers and agents to adapt her novel The House of the Spirits upon publication in 1982, but did not agree to option the work until Danish filmmaker Bille August convinced her with his vision for the film. [5] In January 1993, Miramax acquired North American distribution rights for the film. [6] Casting [ edit ] Arts & Entertainment - This old "House" opened a lot of doors for Isabel Allende". Seattletimes.nwsource.com . Retrieved 11 November 2017.