On the battlefield, Emilia meets Angelita Ayalef, a Mapuche woman who is part of the so-called “cantineras” (bartenders), women who followed the army to feed and cure soldiers, among other functions.
“When doing research for a book, what matters are the questions,” Allende said. “Who were these women, the cantineras? History doesn’t give them a voice, they don’t have personality, there are no names, but they fulfilled a function equal to that of the soldier, and they died like soldiers.”
‘Twice as much effort as any man’
Growing up with an Irish Catholic mother and a stepfather of Mexican descent, Emilia is no stranger to religion and carries a Virgin of Guadalupe medal with her all the time. Emilia affectionately calls her stepfather Papo.
“It’s a tribute to my own stepfather, I didn’t know my father either, like Emilia, but I had a fantastic stepfather and so this is a tribute to him,” Allende said.
With love but brutal honesty, Papo says to Emilia: “Remember, princess, that you will have to make twice as much effort as any man to get half the recognition.”
Being a woman, has Allende ever faced this?
The author recalled sending her newly completed manuscript of “The House of the Spirits” to Carmen Balcells, the renowned Barcelona literary agent who championed the so-called “boom,” or new wave of Latin American writers of the 1960s and 1970s.
Allende recalls Balcells’ blunt assessment: “‘This is a good novel, and I’ll publish it, but that doesn’t mean you’re a writer. And as a woman, you’re going to have to make twice as much effort as any man’… And that was the bible, because that has been my life, twice the effort to get respect, recognition for the work I do.”
Balcells is present in another way in the novel as an inspiration for the character of Paulina del Valle, a successful, autonomous and brutally direct businesswoman who is the aunt of Emilia and introduces her to Chilean high society. Paulina also appears in Allende’s “Daughter of Fortune” (1999) and “Portrait in Sepia” (2000).
