Catherine LuuIB English WL 1Word count : 1361

Self Actualization and corruption of men in House of the Spirits and Woman at Point Zero

Both Isabelle Allende and Nawal El Saadawi used similar themes in their books,

“House of the Spirits” and “Woman at Point Zero”. Self realization of the women and

corruption of men in these two books are a two of the many themes they have used.

These themes are accentual to the development of characters in each book. Because of

the experiences of women and the sexual violence that men have in both House of the

Spirits and Woman at Point Zero, the themes of self actualization and corruption of men

will fit these criteria. In both novels, characters have faced hardships that lead them to

become self actualized and experiences of sexual violence due to the corruption of men.

Throughout these books, the themes will constantly be expressed and will arise from the

many characters.

In House of the Spirits, characters such as; Esteban Trueba, Esteban Garcia,

Pancha, Alba, and Clara have either dealt with sexual violence or have became corrupted

due to their life experiences. Esteban Trueba was the first person to become corrupted

due to the death of Rosa and his sick mother. Since Rosa was the only person Esteban

loved, he loses his attitude towards life and changed. Before Rosa had died he went to

work in a mine because he wanted to marry and support Rosa and lived a life with her,

but when she died he lost his faith in almost everything and moved to Tres Marias.

When Esteban moved to Tres Marias, he fixed the place around making it look

better and he had servants to help him but he needed some more. What Esteban needed

was sex; he raped a girl named Pancha that he sees doing some work for her parents.

After he rapes her, he took her in to live with him as a servant; she cooked and cleaned

for him and when she was pregnant he had abandoned her.

After Esteban kicked Pancha Garcia out of his house, he went back to his old city

to visit his dying mother and she said that he should get married, so he married Clara and

moved back to Tres Marias with Clara and his sister Ferula. As they lived together

Esteban becomes more corruptive because he wanted to help the people of the village but

did not want to make them smarter than him. Esteban has become corrupted, he believed

that he could do anything; he believed that he was the “king” because he had money:

“In the course of the next ten years Esteban Trueba became the most respected

patron in the region. He built brick houses for his workers, hired a teacher for the school,

and raised the standard of living of everyone on his land. Tres Marias was a good

business that required no help from the seam of gold; on the contrary, it served as

collateral for an extension on his concession to the mine.” (Pg 62-63)

In the quote above, it shows how Esteban Trueba was treated well because he had

built houses for his servants and he had raised the standard of living in Tres Marias. After

a while, Esteban changes, he starts to become corrupted due to the way people viewed

him so it made him feel superior like he has never felt before.

Treuba’s bad temper became legend and grew so exaggerated that it even made

him uncomfortable. He forbade anyone to talk back to him and could tolerate no

opposition; he viewed the slightest disagreement as a provocation. His concupiscence

also intensified.” (Pg 63)

Another victim of corruption is Esteban’s grandson; Esteban Garcia, Esteban

Garcia heard stories about his grandfather from his grandmother telling him how bad

Esteban Trueba was and how greedy he was. Esteban Garcia soon hated his grandfather,

and he hated how he did not get any share of his grandfather’s fortune; he took his hatred

on Alba, and started to molest her when she was a child:

“She embodied everything he would never have, never be. He wanted to hurt her

destroy her, but he also wanted to continue smelling her, listening to her baby’s voice and

having her soft skin within the reach of his hand. He stroked her knees, just above the

border of her embroidered socks.”

In Woman at Point Zero, characters such as; Firdaus, the psychologist, Bayomi,

and many other characters have experienced either self realization due to their

experiences or corruption. Firdaus was the first character to get sexually abused because

of the corruption of men. Firdaus was continuously mutilated by the men she meets

throughout the book. At first Firdaus was mutilated by her first husband because she did

not like him but had to pleasure him due the gender inferiority, “All I know is that

anything I would have to face in the world had become less frightening than the vision of

those two eyes, which sent me a cold shiver running through my spine whenever I

remembered them” (pg. 42). Firdaus clearly states in this quote that she does not like her

experience with her husband because she sees it as terrifying and she sees him as an evil

person.

Another man that hurt Firdaus was Bayomi; at first Bayomi was kind to Firdaus

and she saw him as a good person offering to find her a job and giving her a choice of

tangerines or oranges. She did not find Bayomi a corrupted man because of how he

treated her in the beginning, but he changed later on and raped her while she sleeps in his

house. A quote that shows this is; “He took to locking me in the flat before going out. I

now slept on the floor in the other room. He would come back in the middle of the night,

pull the cover away from me with all his weight. I kept my eyes closed and abandoned

my body” (pg. 50). This quote shows how Bayomi turned into a corrupted man because

now he does not care about Firdaus but rather treat her like every other guy would treat

her.

Like Clara, Firdaus soon finds herself after all the hardships she had faced. Clara

finds herself after her periods of being mute because of her sister’s death. She had self

realization by realizing that it is her destiny to deal with her premonitions. An example of

this is when Clara finally talks and predicted how people’s dreams. Firdaus on the other

hand, found self realization throughout her life; she has always looked down upon herself

until she fights back to men later in her life killing one man. An example of Firdaus

finding herself was when she told the psychologist her whole story and did not defend

herself to why she killed Markzouk but rather accepting that as part of her life because

she learns respect towards herself.

In Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits and Nawal El Saawadi’s Woman at Point

Zero, the characters have faced many hardships that lead them to what they have become

or self realization. Esteban Trueba is overcome by corruption due to the fact that he was

being praised by the villagers in Tres Marias because he had helped many of them. Not

only was Esteban the only character in House of the Spirits was corrupted, but Esteban

Garcia was also corrupted because of his anger that was inside him, while the men in

Woman at Point Zero was corrupted due to the fact that men had more power over

women and that women did not do much to fight for themselves. Self realization in

characters of both books are; Clara and Firdaus because both had gone through hardships.

Clara had gone through the prediction of her sister’s death, and after she went mute for a

while, she has premonitions about getting married to Esteban and started to accept who

she is for her powers. Firdaus on the other hand went through harder times than Clara,

Firdaus has gone through sexual abuse by men; every man she meets ends up using her

for sex and she could not take it anymore so she kills a man and learns respect for herself.