The Soul of a Woman

by Isabel Allende

  As of the time of initial publication, the URLs displayed in this book link or refer to existing websites on the Internet. Penguin Random House LLC is not responsible for, and should not be deemed to endorse or recommend, any website other than its own or any content available on the Internet (including without limitation at any website, blog page, information page) that is not created by Penguin Random House.

  The Soul of a Woman is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed and any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

  English language translation © 2021 by Isabel Allende

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Ballantine and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Originally published in Spanish in Spain as Mujeres del alma mía: Sobre el amor impaciente, la vida larga y las brujas buenas by Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, S.A., Barcelona in 2020, copyright © 2020 by Isabel Allende.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Heidi Fischbach: Excerpt from English translation of “Volver a los 17” by Violeta Parra, translated by Heidi Fischbach. Reprinted by permission of Heidi Fischbach.

  Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial: Poem “Arde” from “Ahora que ya bailas” by Miguel Gane, copyright © 2018 by Miguel Gane. Published originally in Spanish by Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. Translated into English as “Burn” by Isabel Allende. Translated by permission of Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial.

  Rocking Chair Books Ltd: Excerpt from “Home” by Warsan Shire, copyright © 2014. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Shearsman Books Ltd: Excerpt from the English translation of “You Foolish Man” by Juana Ines de la Cruz, translated by Michael Smith, copyright © 2005 by Michael Smith. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Michael Smith and Shearsman Books.

  Hardback ISBN 9780593355626

  Ebook ISBN 9780593355633

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Elena Giavaldi

  Cover image: © Charlotte Johnstone / Bridgeman Images

  ep_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Isabel Allende

  About the Author

  When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, even before the concept was known in my family, I am not exaggerating. I was born in 1942, so we are talking remote antiquity. I believe that the situation of my mother, Panchita, triggered my rebellion against male authority. Her husband abandoned her in Peru with two toddlers in diapers and a newborn baby. Panchita was forced to return to her parents’ home in Chile, where I spent the first years of my childhood.

  My grandparents’ house in Santiago, in the Providencia neighborhood, then a residential district and now a labyrinth of offices and shops, was large and ugly, a monstrosity of cement with high ceilings, drafts, walls darkened by kerosene-heater soot, heavy red plush curtains, Spanish furniture made to last a century, horrendous portraits of dead relatives, and piles of dusty books. The front of the house was stately. Someone had tried to give the living room, the library, and the dining room an elegant varnish, but they were seldom used. The rest of the house was the messy kingdom of my grandmother, the children (my brothers and me), the maids, and two or three dogs of no discernible breed. There was also a family of semi-wild cats that reproduced uncontrollably behind the refrigerator; the cook would drown the kittens in a pail on the patio.

  All joy and light disappeared from the house after my grandmother’s premature death. I remember my childhood as a time of fear and darkness. What did I fear? That my mother would die and we would be sent to an orphanage, that I would be kidnapped by pirates, that the Devil would appear in the mirrors…well, you get the idea. I am grateful to that unhappy childhood because it provided ample material for my writing. I don’t know how novelists with happy childhoods in normal homes manage.

  Early on, I realized that my mother was at a disadvantage compared to the men in her family. She had married against her parents’ wishes and the relationship had failed, just as she had been warned it would. She’d had to annul her marriage, which was the only way out in that country, as divorce was not legalized until 2004. Panchita was not trained to work, she had no money or freedom, and she was the target of gossip; not only was she separated from her husband, but she was also young, beautiful, and coquettish.

  * * *

  My anger against machismo started in those childhood years of seeing my mother and the housemaids as victims. They were subordinate and had no resources or voice—my mother because she had challenged convention and the maids because they were poor. Of course, back then I didn’t understand any of this; I was only able to do so in my fifties after spending some time in therapy. However, even if I couldn’t reason, my feelings of frustration were so powerful that they marked me forever; I became obsessed with justice and developed a visceral reaction to male chauvinism. This resentment was an aberration in my family, which considered itself intellectual and modern but according to today’s standards was frankly Paleolithic.

  Panchita consulted several doctors trying to find out what was wrong with me; maybe her daughter suffered from colic or a tapeworm? An obstinate and defiant character was accepted in my brothers as an essential condition of masculinity, but in me it could only be pathological. Isn’t it always thus? Girls are denied the right to be angry and to thrash about. We had some psychologists in Chile, maybe even child psychologists, but in a time dominated by taboos, they were the last resource for the incurably mad. In my family, our lunatics were endured in private. My mother begged me to be more discreet. “I don’t know where you got those ideas. You will acquire a reputation of being butch,” she told me once, without explaining what that word meant.

  She had good reason to worry about me. I was expelled from school—run by German Catholic nuns—at age six, accused of insubordination; it was a prelude to my future. Maybe the real reason I was expelled was that Panchita was a single mother with three kids. That should not have shocked the nuns, because many children in Chile were born out of wedlock, but not usually in our social class.

  For decades I considered my mother a victim, but I have learned that the definition of victim is someone who has no control or power over her or his circumstances. I don’t think that was her case. It’s true that in my early childhood my mother seemed trapped, vulnerable, and sometimes desperate, but her situation changed later, when she met my stepfather and started traveling. She could have fought for more independence and the life she wanted; she could have developed her great potential instead of submitting. But I know that’s easy for me to say because I belong to the feminist generation. I had opportunities that she didn’t have.

  * * *

  Another thing I learned in my fifties in therapy is that the lack of a father in my childhood likely contributed to my rebelliousness. It took me a long time to accept Uncle Ramón—as I always called the man Panchita paired up with when I was about eleven years old—and to understand that I couldn’t have had a better father.

  I realized this when my daughter, Paula, was born; he fell madly in love wit
h her (it was mutual), and for the first time I saw the tender, sentimental, and playful side of the stepfather against whom I had declared war in my adolescence. I had hated him and questioned his authority, but he was an invincible optimist and never even noticed. According to him, I was always an exemplary daughter! Uncle Ramón had such a poor memory for anything negative that in his old age he called me Angelica, my middle name, and said I should sleep on my side so as not to crush my wings. He repeated this up until the end of his life, when dementia and the fatigue of living reduced him to a shadow of the man he had once been.

  In time, Uncle Ramón became my best friend and confidant. He was cheerful, bossy, proud, and a male chauvinist, although he denied the last, arguing that no one was more respectful to women than he. I was never able to fully explain to him how his tremendous machismo manifested. He left his wife, with whom he had four kids, and his wife never consented to an annulment of the marriage, which would have allowed him to legalize his relationship with my mother. That didn’t stop them from living together for almost seventy years. At the beginning, there was scandal and gossip, but later on very few objected to their union. Customs relaxed and, in the absence of divorce, couples got together and separated without bureaucracy.

  Panchita resented her partner’s defects as much as she loved and admired his good qualities. She assumed the role of a dominated and often furious wife because she felt incapable of bringing up her children alone. To be maintained and protected came with an inevitable cost.

  * * *

  I never missed my biological father or had any curiosity to meet him. His condition for consenting to the annulment of his marriage to Panchita was that he would never have to take care of his children, and he took that to the extreme of never seeing us again. The few times his name was mentioned in the family—a subject that was carefully avoided—my mother would get a terrible migraine. I was told only that he was very intelligent and had loved me dearly. I’ve also been told he would play classical music for me and show me art books, and that at two I could identify the artists. He would say “Monet” or “Renoir” and I would flip through the pages to find the right illustration. I doubt it. I wouldn’t be able to do that now, even with the full use of my faculties. In any case, all that is said to have happened before I was three, so I don’t remember, but my father’s sudden disappearance probably scarred me. How could I trust men who love you one day and vanish the next?

  My father’s abandonment of us is not exceptional. Women are the pillar of the family and community in Chile, especially among the working class, where fathers come and go and often disappear for good, never to see their children again. Mothers, on the other hand, are trees with firm roots. They take care of their children and, if necessary, others. Women are so strong and organized, it has been said that Chile is a matriarchy. Even the worst cavemen repeat this fallacy. The truth is that men control political and economic power—they make the laws and apply them at their convenience—and in case that does not suffice, the Catholic Church, with its customary patriarchal zeal, intervenes to support them. Women are the bosses only in their families…and then only sometimes.

  * * *

  Feminism often sounds scary because it seems too radical or is interpreted as hatred of men. Before continuing I must clarify this for some of my readers. Let’s start with the term patriarchy.

  My definition of patriarchy may differ a bit from Wikipedia or Webster’s Dictionary. Originally it meant the absolute supremacy of men over women, over other species, and over nature, but the feminist movement has undermined that absolute power in some aspects, although in others it persists as it has for thousands of years. Although many discriminatory laws have been changed, the patriarchy continues to be the prevalent system for political, economic, cultural, and religious oppression. It grants dominion and privileges to the male gender. Aside from misogyny—contempt for women—this system includes diverse forms of exclusion and aggression: racism, homophobia, classism, xenophobia, and intolerance of different ideas and people. Patriarchy is imposed with aggression; it demands obedience and punishes those who defy it.

  And what is my definition of feminism? It is not what we have between our legs but what we have between our ears. It’s a philosophical posture and an uprising against male authority. It’s a way of understanding human relations and a way to see the world. It’s a commitment to justice and a struggle for the emancipation of women, the LGBTQIA+ community, anyone oppressed by the system, including some men, and all others who want to join. Welcome! The greater our number the better.

  In my youth I fought for equality. I wanted to participate in the men’s game. But in my mature years I’ve come to realize that the game is a folly; it is destroying the planet and the moral fiber of humanity. Feminism is not about replicating the disaster. It’s about mending it. As a result, of course, it confronts powerful reactionary forces like fundamentalism, fascism, tradition, and many others. It’s depressing to see that among the opposition forces are so many women who fear change and cannot imagine a different future.

  The patriarchy is stony. Feminism, like the ocean, is fluid, powerful, deep, and encompasses the infinite complexity of life; it moves in waves, currents, tides, and sometimes in storms. Like the ocean, feminism never stays quiet.

  No, quiet you are not prettier

  You are gorgeous when you struggle

  when you fight for what is yours

  when you don’t shut up

  and your words bite,

  when you open your mouth

  and everything around catches fire.

  No, quiet you are not more beautiful,

  only a little more dead.

  One thing I know about you

  and it’s that I have never seen anybody

  ever

  so eager to live

  shouting

  —“Burn” by Miguel Gane

  * * *

  I assumed in my childhood that I would have to take care of my mother and support myself as soon as possible. This was reinforced by my grandfather’s message. Although he was the unquestionable patriarch of the family, he understood the disadvantages of being a woman and wanted to give me the tools I needed so I would never have to depend on anyone. I spent my first eight years under his tutelage. Later, at sixteen, I moved back in with him when Uncle Ramón sent my brothers and me back to Chile. We had been living in Lebanon, where Uncle Ramón was consul, when in 1958 a political and religious crisis threatened to plunge the country into civil war. My brothers went to a military academy in Santiago and I went to my grandfather’s house.

  My grandfather Agustín started working at fourteen when his father’s death left the family in a helpless condition. For him, life was about discipline, effort, and responsibility. He held his head high: Honor came first. I grew up under the influence of his stoic school of thought: Avoid all ostentation and squandering, don’t complain, endure, perform, don’t ask for or expect anything, fend for yourself, and help and serve others without boasting.

  He told me the following story many times. There was a man who had an only son, whom he loved with all his soul. When the child turned twelve the father told him to jump from the second-floor balcony without fear, because he would catch him below. The son obeyed, but at the last moment the father crossed his arms and let the child crash to the ground. He broke several bones in the fall. The moral of this cruel fable was to trust nobody, not even a father.

  In spite of his severity, my grandfather was beloved for his generosity and his unconditional service to others. I adored him. I remember his white mane, his loud laughter, his yellow teeth, his hands twisted by arthritis, his mischievous sense of humor, and the irrefutable fact that I was his favorite grandchild. Undoubtedly he would have preferred another grandson, but in time he learned to love me in spite of my gender because I reminded him of his late wife,
my grandmother Isabel, with whom I share a name and an expression around the eyes.

  * * *

  In my adolescence it was obvious that I didn’t fit in anywhere, and it was my poor grandfather’s fate to deal with me. I was not lazy or insolent; quite the opposite. I was a good student and I obeyed the rules of coexistence without protest. But I lived in a state of contained fury that didn’t manifest in tantrums or door slamming, only eternal, accusing silence. I was a knot of complexes. I felt ugly, impotent, invisible, that I was a prisoner of a boring existence, and very lonely. I didn’t belong in a group. I felt different and excluded. I fought solitude by reading voraciously and writing daily to my mother, who by then had moved with Uncle Ramón from Lebanon to Turkey. She also wrote me often and we didn’t mind that the letters would take weeks to reach us. That’s how the correspondence we maintained for the remainder of her lifetime began.

  I have been clearly aware of injustices in the world since I was a kid. I remember that in my childhood the maids at home worked from dawn to dusk, had very little free time, earned a pittance, and slept in cells without windows and with no more furniture than a cot and a rickety chest of drawers. (That was in the 1940s and 1950s. Of course, this is not the case anymore in Chile.) As a teenager my concern with justice only increased. While other girls worried about their appearance and how to attract boys, I was preaching socialism and feminism. No wonder I had no friends. Inequality infuriated me. In Chile, matters of social class, opportunity, and income were appalling.

  The worst discrimination was against the poor—it always is—but inequality against women concerned me more. We were light-years from the advances of the feminist movements of Europe and the United States, although we had always had visionary women who fought for better education and participated in politics, public health, science, and the arts. No one in my environment spoke about the situation of women, not in my home, not at school, and not in the press, so I don’t know how I acquired that awareness.