Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Incest?
In both pieces of work, incest appears multiple times. It occurs often in 100 Years of Solitude as well as in the movie The House of the Spirits with Esteban falling in love with both sisters, his sister falling in love with Clara, and Esteban's bastard son making sexual moves on his step-sister Blanca on separate occasions. I am not quite sure why Marquez and Allende would have their characters have incestuous relationships in times that reflect modern points of history. One thought I had for the employment of incest in 100 Years of Solitude is that it is used as another depth to the solitude of the Buendia family. It is a problem in their family possibly because they are too confined to their own family/town of Macondo. In The House of the Spirits Esteban (the bastard son) even tells Blanca they have the same blood running through their veins as he runs his hand along her inner thigh, so I am not quite sure why Allende would include this in the story. What do you guys think?
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12 comments:
I agree with you Chrissy that the incestuous relationships must be included because it adds, as you said depth, and makes the characters story lines much more intertwined. I dont understand the need for this but i think it makes the story lines much more complex and interesting for the reader/ movie watcher.
I agree with Chrissy that incest within the Buendia family and solitude are related. I believe the Buendia family could represent an upper class family that tries to interbreed to keep the blood "pure". Perhaps Marquez is trying to show through these incestuous relationships the faults to this way of thinking, since the children that are produced from incest are far from flawless. What do you all think?
I also agree with Chrissy's comment that the incest is definitely related to solitude. We should first remember Garcia Marquez's comment that he "just wanted to write a book about incest." Although this is one possible answer to the question, a more logical one is that incest was a prevalent reality during the post colonial period in Latin America. Furthermore, I found it ironic how the incest managed to become so rampant despite Ursula's fixation with preventing it.
Yes, it definitely makes for quite an appealing/complex story. I think it's interesting how Allende directly contrasts the crossing of blood lines with the importance of a family's last name. It's almost ironic. You'd think they'd be ashamed that incest occurs regularly within the family; however, they are more concerned with their family's status regarding last names. When Blanca is pregnant with Pedro's child, her father immediately finds someone of a higher status to marry his daughter and become the "adopted" father of the child. Esteban does this in vain, only so his last name is not tarnished and so consequently his political career is not put in danger.
It definitely was ironic that Ursula kept reminding them of the dangers of incestual relationships, even though she herself married her cousin.
Also, I thought it was interesting how the book began with the "pigs tail" prophecy and ended with its fulfillment. Marquez might have done this to display the reoccuring tragic cycles of history.
I think the fulfillment of the pig tail prophesy is also significant because it shows how the Buendias learned nothing over the course of a century. Ursula runs the risk of bearing children with tails at the very beginning of the family's eminence, and the same mistakes are made generations later. It is also interesting that the foundation of Macondo is caused indirectly by Ursula's initial refusal to risk having children with tails. There, the Buendias gain power and importance, multiply, fragment as a dynasty and family, and ultimately fall prey to the same danger they faced in the beginning. Incest is the constant threat lurking in the history of the family; the Buendias are undone by the same force that sets them on their initial path of good fortune. I think the entire situation could be a metaphor for the demise of an empire by the same forces that created it.
The incest in these stories never results in anything good, and its function seems to be ,as Julia said, to promote the idea that the practice of purity in the bloodline is entirely faulty.
As to these incestuous events aligning with historical references, I am at a loss for an explanation. The incest in 100 Years of Solitude does further the isolation of their family, and also results in problems(pig's tail).
I agree with Collin when he said that the Buendia family learned nothing. Ursula was totally fixated on preventing any children with pig's tails from being born. However, each family member disregarded her forewarning. In the end, the circle is closed with the child with the pig's tail being born. The family has been completely closed minded in learning from preventing incest, and disregarding reality in general. Over the course of the forming of Macondo, they family did not attempt to learn for their experiences.
After studying The Tin Drum, I realized that I completely forgot about the incest that takes place in that novel too. The relationship between Jan and Anges, who are cousins, is a clear example of incest. I guess writers of this time were very interested in adding incest as another dimension in their novels.
I feel that incest is directly related to solitude. The feelings of alienation and the inability to make pure connections with people outside of a family forces the Buendia family to fall prey to poly amorous, incestuous relationships. I don't think that this incest is intentional--it's just the reality of the sadness and hardships that pass through Macondo.
Julia made a very good point about Ursula's hypocrisy regarding incest. She time after time preaches how incest will cause the downfall of the Buendia family. Then she marries her cousin and has three children. And interestingly enough, because of magical realism, she is able to live long enough to watch incest break her family apart; no one listens to her warnings. Esteban is equally as hypocrtical. He fusses over his daughter's involvement with Pedro, a member of a much lower class, while he has affairs with lower class women that inevitably result in the bearing over children. Though he is ashamed that Blanca bares Pedro's child, he does not even acknowledge his own fault or realize the similarities of his actions with his own affairs. Hypocrisy is common between both works and eventually results in the downfall of both aristocratic families.
I, like Julia, find the "pig tails" prophecy very peculiar. At the end of the story, once Ursula's prediction is fulfilled, the reader is forced to extrapolate multiple meanings for this oddity. I, like Julia, believe Marquez ends his story with Ursula's prophecy fulfilled in order to demonstrate to the reader that time is cyclical. However, I also feel that Marquez uses Ursula's foresight as a symbol for the subjectiveness of reality. Think about it, Ursula worries her child will be born with pig's tail and eventually the last generation of the Buedias is born with a pig's tail. The novel ends in this manner because Marquez wishes to demonstrate that reality attunes to Ursula's perceptions.
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