Of Feminism and Other Desires

At times Clara would accompany her mother and two or three of her suffragette friends on their visits to factories, where they would stand on soapboxes and make speeches to the women who worked there while the foremen and the bosses, snickering and hostile, observed them from a prudent distance. Despite her tender age and complete ignorance on matters of the world, Clara grasped the absurdity of the situation and wrote in her notebook about the contrast of her mother and her friends, in their fur coats and suede boots, speaking of oppression, equality and rights to a sad, resigned group of hard-working women in denim aprons, their hands red with chilblains. From the factory the ladies would move on to the tearoom on the Plaza de Armas, where they would stop for tea and pastry and discuss the progress of their campaign, not for a moment letting this frivolous distraction divert them from their flaming ideals. At other times her mother would take her to the slums on the outskirts of the city or to the tenements, where they arrived with their car piled high with food and with clothes that Nivea and her friends sewed for the poor. On these occasions too, the child wrote with forminable intuition that charity had no effect on such monumental injustice. 

Out of all the books I have read, this remains one of my most favorite passages. I have always had a soft spot for the bourgeois woman who has her own soft spot for the poor, and do something about it. I guess it's because it reminds me of my own convictions and the way I am. I was born in a relatively well-to-do family, with a slightly conservative mother but utterly liberal father, which is the background of most of Isabel Allende's heroines. 

My lover compares me to Scarlett O'Hara because of the fire of my soul and the drive for perfection that consumes me, and at times even maddens me. With all due respect, and with the love due him, he is wrong. I do not want to be compared to such a Southern belle with no heart for anybody, not even the man who had doted and loved her without so much as appreciation from her. I see myself instead as an Allende heroine--perhaps Clara the Clairvoyant or Alba Trueba, or maybe  Eva Luna of the many stories. I am a rebel, true, but not one without a cause. Why do you think, dearest lover, why do you think I am in law, fighting nail and claw to remain? What do you think I ask the God of this Universe in my heart of hearts? I want the wisdom to pursue true justice. Law is one sure way to the pursuit of this dream. (Of course you're welcome, dear heart, to share the road with me, as we also share the same goal. But that is another story.)

Reference:

Allende, Isabel. The House of the Spirits. Translated from the Spanish by Magda Bogin. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.