These complicated webs of connection sometimes lead to pain and loss for Allende’s characters, but Allende nonetheless argues through their stories that family ties are a crucial source of love and meaning.įamily is at the center of much drama and pain in Allende’s novel, which underscores the power of families to cause emotional pain and even violence.

Amanda falls in love with Esteban’s twin sons, Jaime and Nicolás, and Miguel ends up being the love of Esteban’s granddaughter, Alba’s, life. The interconnectedness of families is also a key part of the lives of Amanda and Miguel, an orphaned sister and brother. On Esteban’s hacienda (estate), Tres Marías, lives the García family, a peasant family including Esteban’s trusted foreman, Pedro Segundo (who is also the brother of Pancha, the mother of Esteban’s illegitimate son), and his son Pedro Tercero, the future lover of Esteban’s daughter, Blanca. The novel also examines the Trueba family, whose only son, Esteban, is first engaged to Rosa del Valle and later marries her younger sister, Clara, after Rosa’s untimely death. Allende’s exploration of families begins with the del Valles, who suffer endlessly when the family’s eldest daughter, Rosa, is inadvertently murdered in an assassination attempt meant for her father, Severo, an up-and-coming politician of the Liberal party in an overwhelmingly conservative country. Families and their interconnections with one another are a complex theme within The House of the Spirits.

The house of the spirits novel