Most of the characters in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits are motivated in some way by love. The theme of love is first introduced with Esteban Trueba’s engagement to Rosa del Valle, a beautiful and angelic young woman whose untimely death leaves Esteban heartbroken. Esteban later marries Rosa’s younger sister, Clara, a mysterious woman with whom he also falls madly in love. Love is not limited to Esteban; it is experienced deeply by each successive generation of the Trueba family. Nor is the power of love limited to romance between lovers: it is foundational in families and friendships within the novel, and love brings the characters peace, comfort, and inspiration. With the portrayal of these different kinds of love in The House of the Spirits, Allende highlights the power of love and ultimately argues that it has the ability to motivate and guide one’s actions more than any other emotion or desire.
Each generation of the Trueba family, including Esteban, is guided by romantic love, which underscores love’s vast influence and motivating power. After Rosa’s death, Esteban escapes to Tres Marías, his family’s estate, where he rapes a peasant woman and leaves behind a trail of abused women and illegitimate children. After meeting and falling in love with Clara, however, Esteban reforms his womanizing ways and attempts to keep Clara sheltered from his violent tendencies. Esteban ultimately ends up abusing Clara, too, but his deep love for her keeps his violence at bay for many years. Esteban and Clara’s daughter, Blanca, falls in forbidden love with Pedro Tercero García, one of the peasant workers on her father’s hacienda. Esteban does not approve of their love, but Blanca and Pedro Tercero’s relationship begins when they are just children, and it is a complete “marriage of body and soul.” While Blanca and Pedro Tercero are never able to realize their love in the way they wish, they spend their lives pining for each other. Likewise, Esteban’s granddaughter, Alba (the secret lovechild of Blanca and Pedro Tercero), is similarly driven by love. Alba falls in love with Miguel, a revolutionary, whose association with Alba leads to her arrest and subsequent torture during the military coup at the novel’s climax. Alba is repeatedly raped and electrocuted, but in her deep love for Miguel, she refuses to give him up to the corrupt police.
In addition to romantic love, Allende also focuses on the love between family members and friends, which suggests that love is powerful in all its forms. After Clara and Esteban are married, Clara begins an unlikely friendship with Esteban’s sister, Férula. Férula and Clara’s relationship grows into one of deep love, and even after Esteban becomes jealous of their relationship and banishes Férula from their lives, Férula summons her ghost to say goodbye to Clara after she has died. Because of the deep love between Férula and Clara, not even death can separate them. Clara’s mother, Nívea, gives birth to 15 children, but she loves Clara “like an only child,” and this deep love between mother and daughter is repeated between Clara and her own daughter, Blanca. After Blanca is caught having an affair with Pedro Tercero, Esteban forces her to marry the Count Jean de Satigny and move north, but Clara knows that her separation from her daughter won’t last long. Blanca soon leaves Jean and returns to her mother, drawn back by their deep love. Esteban, too, shares a deep love and connection with his granddaughter, Alba, despite his relative indifference to his own children. Esteban has little connection with Alba’s mother, Blanca, or with his own twin sons, Jaime and Nicolás, but his love for Alba transforms Esteban from an abusive and greedy man to a loving and attentive grandfather.
Esteban’s love, especially his “exaggerated love” for Clara, is “without a doubt the most powerful emotion of his life, greater by far than his rage and pride.” The characters in The House of the Spirits are motivated by many emotions—among them fear, hate, and anger—and they are equally driven by political aspirations and the desire for social justice. But throughout the book, it is love that truly inspires them, and through their lives Allende effectively argues for the overwhelming power of love.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Love ThemeTracker
Love Quotes in The House of the Spirits
“Father, 1 don’t know how to say this. I think I committed a sin.”
“Of the flesh, my child?”
“My flesh is withered, Father, but not my spirit! The devil is tormenting me.”
“The mercy of the Lord is infinite.”
“You don’t know the thoughts that can run through the mind of a single woman, Father, a virgin who has never been with a man, not for any lack of opportunities but because God sent my mother a protracted illness and I had to be her nurse.”
“That sacrifice is recorded in heaven, my child.”
“Even if I sinned in my thoughts?”
“Well, it depends on your thoughts....”
“I can’t sleep at night. I feel as if I’m choking. I get up and walk around the garden and then I walk inside the house. I go to my sister-in-law’s room and put my ear to her door. Sometimes I tiptoe in and watch her while she sleeps. She looks like an angel. I want to climb into bed with her and feel the warmth of her skin and her gentle breathing.”
He had finally come to accept—beaten into it by the tide of new ideas— that not all women were complete idiots, and he believed that Alba, who was too plain to attract a well-to-do husband, could enter one of the professions and make her living like a man.
