*aNa*

What can the reader of a story get from the author? A lot actually. In the novel The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende there as many situations that the author has the chance to view as good or bad. Esteban, the patron in the novel, has a sexual problem. He is all the time raping the peasant girls. This seems like such a horrible problem but in the story it is portrayed as bad but in a way not the worst thing in the world. The author points out that the peasants seem to think this is in a way supposed to happen. She makes it a point for one of the peasant girls to say that this is what happened to her mother and grandmother like it is a ritual thing that will happen. The reader then sees this raping as bad but what is normal for the patron to do. The patron in this story also visits whore houses off and on. In today’s society we think of such thing as on of the lowest jobs or livings a woman could have. The whores of the house are even looked down upon as not as good as the rest of the world. Isabel Allende does something interesting. She makes the idea of these whore houses something that was looked at as normal. By having Esteban go there it was almost like him just going to a grocery story or just to visit a friend. The whore of the house, whom Esteban met before, even states that her dream is to open her own house and she would know the exact way to run a successful business. The patron then looks at her with ambition and dreams as that of a great woman. That is the last thing someone today would want to do right? If someone is looked at as the lowest of all people the last thing they want to do is keep going as that right? The author of this story makes the reader forget about the viewpoints of today and accept what is “right” or “normal” in the time of the novel.