Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 12:04:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: DLANGSTON-AT-maple.nac.mass.edu
Subject: RE: mermaids in poco lit


I too am interested in this mermaid allusion in _House of 
the Spirits_.  My class is reading this novel at the 
moment, and we have been discussing this point with regard
to several dimensions of the book.

A couple of thoughts that have, to this point, informed my
reading of Rosa.
  1) She is the only woman in the del Valle-Trueba circuit
     whose name does not suggest whiteness or translucency.
  2) She seems to belong to the same discourse as that which
     produces Rememdios the Beauty in _100 Years of Solitude_.
     So perhaps the cultural significance of mermaids is less
     important than the role of "magical realism" in Latin
     American fiction.
  3) She is "otherworldly" (she is said to be made of "different
     material from the rest of the human race" and she is said
     to be an angel at birth) and stands at the beginning of the
     novel as a kind of "mythic" being whose death at the hand
     of political assassins propels the plot into the "history"
     of modern Chile.  After her death, Esteban Trueba decides
     to start gain wealth on a hacienda and the exploitation of
     the labor of others instead of with his own hands as a 
     miner. (I have wondered if Allende is trying to
     play with the myth/history opposition in parallel ways to
     that of Garcia-Marquez and others.)

The mermaid allusion however is interesting.  My only context is the
current fad for mermaids in American pop-culture, but I have doubts
that Latin American writers take their cues from Darryl Hannah movies.
Instead my first suspicion would be Homer: does Rosa stand for the
siren song of an uncorrupted origin/presence that cannot survive in a
corrupt world and the desire for which is so disruptive?

I don't know, but I am very interested in the thoughts of others.
                      David Langston
                      English/Communications
                      North Adams State College
                      North Adams, MA
                      dlangston-AT-maple.nac.mass.edu


     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

     ------------------