The Trueba House: A Feminist Fortress in Allende's The House of the Spirits Magic Realist World

Abstract

This article explores how Isabel Allende employs the techniques of magic realism in The House of the Spirits to transform the traditionally limiting space of home into a site of empowerment for women. The novel's female characters are initially confined to the domestic sphere, yet they gradually subvert the boundaries between the public and private realms, ultimately challenging the patriarchal order. The novel's depiction of the Trueba house, with its labyrinthine architecture and supernatural occurrences, blurs the boundaries between natural and supernatural worlds. Such a blurring reflects the ways in which female characters transcend the confines of the domestic space. Clara's psychic abilities and the house's sentient nature disrupt canonical views of females’ passivity and domesticity. This article contributes to the body of critical literature on Allende's work, highlighting the novel's innovative use of magic realism to reshape the domestic sphere as a site of female power and resistance. While previous scholars have explored the gendered dynamics in Allende's novels, this study offers a fresh perspective on the role of the house as a metaphorical and supernatural agent of empowerment.

Keywords: Domestic Space, House, Isabel Allende, Magic Realism, Resistance.

Highlights:

1. Reframing Squid Game as a Work of Magical Realism
   The paper offers a novel interpretation of Squid Game not merely as dystopian fiction, but as a contemporary magic realist narrative, highlighting how its surreal elements function within a coherent aesthetic and ideological framework.
2. Uncovering the Capitalist Logic Behind Childhood Games
   It demonstrates how the series transforms familiar children’s games into deadly spectacles, using this transformation to critique capitalist structures that commodify innocence, leisure, and life itself.
3. Mapping the Evolution of Systemic Violence Across Three Seasons
   By analyzing all three seasons, the study reveals how the series expands from localized critiques of Korean economic injustice to a planetary narrative of globalized neoliberal control, framed through recurring surreal motifs.
4. Introducing the Concept of Planetary Magic Realism
   The paper advances the concept of "planetary magic realism" to describe how surreal aesthetics in Squid Game are mobilized across borders, cultures, and ideologies—turning capitalism itself into a global mythic structure.
5. Positioning Squid Game within a Transnational Media Tradition
   It situates the series alongside other global texts like Black Mirror, Alice in Borderland, and The Platform, contributing to scholarly discourse on how magical realism in visual media serves as a tool for ideological resistance and socio-political critique.