“… must we die in order to know certain things?” | death stripping our boundaries in Bombal’s “Shrouded Woman”

This week’s novella is the second read for me in this course and although I do wish that I was able to take more of my time with it — which is why I’m considering rereading it— it did feel more satisfying to read than Proust. My most probable reason is it simply being easier to comprehend and not feeling like an endless stream of thoughts. I admit there were a few times where I’d lose myself in between the present or Ana narrating her past and slips between life and death, but they weren’t too major. What I did love was the novella’s different takes on the complexities of love and relationships through the characters’ experiences.

And by its complexities, I mean that I appreciate how no character is unflawed and it shows that forming and maintaining relationships isn’t meant to be easy. Throughout our whole lives, people come and go to give us different experiences and to teach us things, and this can feel terrifying and confusing. However, another interesting thing the novella does is writing about these feelings from the perspective of a dead woman. I realized that it allows us to look back on the rollercoaster of emotions in life with a mindset stripped of barriers due to being in the position of a dead character.

I found that death lifts walls that prevent us from vulnerability or the truth and a quote in the novella even says so itself: “Must we die in order to know certain things?” And I really liked how the book shows moments of Ana pondering on it because I’ve always wondered the same thing. A more memorable moment where I found this occurred was in chapter 21 where Ana’s daughter cries desperately over her mother but feels surprising to Ana: “My poor child, I have known you having fits of anger, capricious tears, but never would I have imagined such a wild outpouring of grief as now compels you to sob […] Yet, you were not cold, you were young, only young. Your tenderness toward me was like a seed borne within you which my death has forced […] No gesture of mine ever brought out what my death achieves at last. You see, you see how death can also be an act of life.” That last line was something that especially stuck with me. It frames death as not just “the end”.

Another part I just thought to mention and found so greatly worded was when Maria Griselda’s beauty was spoken about. I specifically point to the quote that says: “And in its cruelty, destiny did not even grant her the small privileges always given everyone else. For her parents did not resemble her at all, or her grandparents; and in the old family portraits, she could never find any common feature, any expression that could have made her recognize herself as a link in a human chain. Oh what loneliness was hers!” I found this quote so interesting because despite so many people finding something beautiful in the midst of their insecurities difficult, we can’t forget about the generations of faces passed down to form ours. I kind of interpreted it as you may not find yourself or be considered the most beautiful person in the world but how truly lonely would it be to have a face crafted from nothing and resembling no human before you.

My discussion question is: How reliable of a narrator do you find Ana Maria to be?