The Letter and The House of the

The Letter and The House of the

The novels So Long a Letter written by Mariama Ba and The House of the Spirits written by Isabel Allende have certain similarities.

The novel So Long a Letter is about a adult female whose hubby died and she discovers that her now asleep hubby has a 2nd married woman. The fresh consists of the chief character writes a missive to her friend, whose ex-husband besides took on a 2nd married woman, explicating the tests she is sing. The fresh The House of the Spirits consists of three storytellers that portray their life. In the novels So Long a Letter and The House of the Spirits there is an original of a Phoenix that is portrayed by the characters Esteban Trueba, and Alba from Isabel Allende ‘s novel, plus Ramatoulaye, and Aissatou in Mariama Ba ‘s when the characters are faced with many losingss.In the novel The House of the Spirits Esteban Trueba is forced to cover with the decease of legion loved 1s.

In the beginning of the narrative, his fiance Rosa dies from being poisoned by brandy, and he metaphorically turns into ashes when he believes “ without Rosa life no longer had any significance ” ( Allende 47 ) . He overcomes this loss by traveling on and get marrieding Rosa ‘s sister Clara. We learn of this determination when Clara stops her silence and asked him if he wanted to get married her, to which he replied, “ Yes, Clara, that ‘s why I came ” ( 111 ) . Esteban defeated this test with his ain manner of pull offing his jobs.Esteban besides is required to cover with the decease of his sister Ferula. Previous to her death, he forces her to travel out of his house, but non before he “ recognize his sister is dead when Clara vented all his rage as an unhappy hubby, shouting things at her he ne’er should hold said ” ( 157 ) .

Clara is the 1 that announces “ Ferula is dead ” ( 175 ) after her shade visits the household. Esteban becomes a Phoenix once more when he is “ ferocious because his sister, even now that she was dead, could still pull off to do him experience guilty, merely as she had when he was a male child ” ( 180 ) . The metempsychosis occurs when Clara helps him to understand his sister. Clara besides passes off and creates the portraiture of a character being a Phoenix. Alba, Clara ‘s granddaughter,“ began to endure incubuss from which she awoke shouting and hectic.

She dreamt that everybody in the household was deceasing and that she was left to roll in the large house entirely, with no other company than the swoon, threadbare shade that wandered up and down the corridors ” ( 346 ) .Alba rises from the ashes by get downing to compose her grandmas life narrative, “ with the aid of her gramps, whose memory remained integral down to the last second of his 90 old ages ” ( 489 ) .In the epistolatory novel So Long a Letter the chief character Ramatoulaye has to cover with the decease of her hubby Modou. She is faced with her agony as the “ laments and cryings all around her , corroborate his decease ” ( Ba 3 ) , and she must digest“ the minute dreaded by every Senegalese adult female, the minute when she sacrifices her ownerships as gifts to her family-in-law, and worse still, beyond her ownerships she gives up her personality, her self-respect, going a thing in the service of the adult male who has married her, his gramps, his grandma, his male parent, his female parent, his brother, his sister, his uncle, his aunt, his male and female cousins, his friends ” ( 4 ) .She is characterized as a Phoenix when she takes on this doctrine: “ to get the better of my resentment, I think of human fate ” ( 11 ) . This doctrine helps her manage the trials she faces in her life.In both novels the characters deal with a loss of love.

Esteban losingss his love Clara when he beats her, and she stops talking and goes into old ages of silence. He became the Phoenix when he “ ignored her silence and spoke usually to her, construing her little gestures as answers ” ( 261 ) . Aissatou in Mariama Ba ‘s novel is faced with the loss of her love when her hubby takes on a 2nd married woman. Aissatou is converted to ash when she discovers “ the whole town knew about ” her hubbies new married woman while she “ suspected nil and continued to be beaming ” ( Ba 30 ) . She triumphed over this obstruction by composing him a missive that informed her partner that she was “ depriving herself of his love, his name, clothed in her self-respect, the lone worthy garment ” ( 32 ) .

She finally depicted a Phoenix when she divorced him.Many of the characters were troubled with a loss of order in their life. A girl ‘s gestation was one of the causes of this confusion. In The House of the Spirits Esteban Trueba ‘s girl Blanca becomes pregnant by Pedro Tercero Garcia. Being considered a member of high society, Esteban “ knew that the dirt would be the same whether she gave birth to a asshole kid or married the boy of a provincial: society would reprobate her in either instance ” ( Allende 246 ) . To restore the order in his life, he went out in hunt of “ a hubby for his deflowered girl and a male parent for ” ( 247 ) her kid.

Jean de Satigny was the suer he found for his girl to get married. By finally demanding his girl to get married against her will, he restored the stableness in his life which symbolized his metempsychosis as a Phoenix.Ramatoulaye ‘s girl, Aissatou namesake, became pregnant, excessively. In her missive to Aissatou she wrote, “ I envy you for holding merely boys! You do n’t cognize the panics I face in covering with the jobs of my girls ” ( Ba 87 ) .

The job is mentioning to her girl being with kid. It took her “ superhuman attempt ” to come to the “ determination to assist and protect ” ( 83 ) her girl, even though it went against her civilization. Her neighbour Farmata, who “ had diverging points of position on everything ” ( 80 ) , urged her to disinherit the anticipating kid. Get the better ofing the state of affairs, Ramatoulaye ends her missive explaining that “ despite everything- letdowns and humiliations- hope still lives within her ” ( 89 ) . This means that she turned off from all her problems to get the better of them and be reborn as a PhoenixAlba experienced a loss of order in her life when she fell I love with Miguel in The House of the Spirits.

The immature twosome “ sought out every possible juncture to run into on the leafy promenades of the nearby park ” , they were happy and full of “ unmanageable passion ” ( Allende 346 ) for each other. This was at the extremum of their life. During the political convulsion that plagued the town, Miguel went losing and Alba had “ imagined a thousand times over that he was a captive or that he had been put to decease in the most awful mode ” ( 450 ) . This was when Alba had reached her breakage point, and she was at stone underside.

When she eventually saw him, she was overjoyed and savored everything about him.Ramatoulaye ‘s loss of order occurred when she discovered the being of her co-wife. Irritated by her hubby ‘s 2nd married woman, Binetou, she was obligated to hold her co-wife “ installed in her house for the funeral, in conformity with tradition ” ( Ba 3 ) . She had to confront her job caput on and relied on her diary as a “ prop on her hurt ” ( 1 ) . With the aid of this get bying mechanism, she was able to last this seeking state of affairs when Binetou “ return ed to her SICAP Villa. At last! ” ( 8 ) .

The characters Esteban Trueba, and Alba from Isabel Allende ‘s novel, along with Ramatoulaye, and Aissatou in Mariama Ba ‘s are depicted as Phoenixs when the characters are faced with a loss in the novels So Long a Letter and The House of the Spirits. The characters were burdened with the loss of people, loss of order, and loss of love. The characters used their ain manner of covering with the different fortunes they were overwhelmed with. In the terminal there were legion characters that were portrayed within the original of the Phoenix.Word Count: 1353