Sanitarium

How Allende Reveals Esteban’s Personality Through His Actions Towards His Family

Esteban Trueba: what is wrong with him? This is the reader’s first impression of Esteban. After seeing Esteban, in the first three chapters, rape countless peasant girls at Tres Marias, the reader is left in awe of his horrific lifestyle. Little does the audience expect that Esteban’s temper and selfishness will lead to far worse. In chapter four: The Time of the Spirits, Esteban physically assaults his sister, Ferula, and permanently bans her from his house. This just being his first act of physically harming a member of his own family, Esteban goes on to brutally beat his daughter, Blanca, and viciously punches his wife, Clara, in the face. After Blanca is mercilessly beaten, the reader has lost all hope in Esteban. But then he goes even further and punches his wife; this is the last straw. As soon as Clara is hit, the reader’s hate for Esteban is at its peek, and there it will remain. Whatever feelings of non-resentment the reader still had for Esteban from his immediate and sincere apology to Clara is now gone with no chance of coming back. In chapter 6, The Revenge, Esteban finds Pedro Tercero, Blanca’s lover, and decides to kill him; but the axe misses and only chops off three of Pedro’s fingers. Even though Pedro was not part of Esteban’s family, Esteban’s anger towards Pedro began as a result of a problem he with his daughter; also this was just another step up from the malicious beatings he gave to his daughter and wife – he had physically disabled a person. By revealing Esteban’s heated temper, to the point of assault, and his selfishness, stemming from his jealousy, Isabel Allende describes the first in a series of despicable acts committed by Esteban against his family, in order to strengthen the reader’s feelings of resentment towards Esteban.
Esteban’s expelling Ferula from his house, in the manner in which he did it, is only the first in his series of inter-family abuse. All of which were resulted as direct consequences of his uncontrollably heated temper and his selfishness. This is clearly evident in chapter four, pages 131-132, when Esteban returns from his trip to Tres Marias, and finds Ferula seeking comfort, from the earthquake, in the bed with Clara. When he sees this, Esteban is immediately enraged and without assessing the situation, “he pulled her from the bed, dragged her down the hall, pushed her down the stairs, and thrust her into the library.” (132) Esteban’s hothead is a product of his insecurities, which includes other traits that are vivid in other areas of the book. Even here, his jealousy that maybe someone else was pleasuring his wife or that someone else could make his wife happy, threw him into ‘thrash’ mode; he responded the only way he knew how: with violence; his behavior can be compared to that of a uneducated, uncivilized person. Merely a few pages before, Allende tell the reader that there are definitely problems between Ferula and Esteban, which is understandable, but when he hatefully flings her down the stairs, Esteban had bigger problems than his overactive hormones (his serial raping). Of course it only got worse and worse from this point, but Allende used Ferula expulsion as a shocking introduction to The Real Esteban Trueba.
Two chapters later, in The Revenge, the reader again sees Esteban’s selfishness and anger take over, when he ruthlessly beats Blanca with a whip, then, feeling betrayed by Clara, furiously knocks her out. When Esteban gets tipped off that his daughter, Blanca, is secretly in love with a peasant, Pedro Tercero, he becomes infuriated; he cannot stand the fact that someone of a lower class has appealed to his daughter. This again is an example of selfishness and jealousy. He is unable to see that ‘true love’ knows no bounds, that the person who his daughter falls in love with is no choice of his own. Once more, this leads Esteban to act out in a violent manner. On his way to find Pedro and Blanca, “he ran into Blanca, who was returning to the house, humming as she walked, her hair disheveled, her clothing dirty, with the happy look of those who have nothing else to ask from life.” (199) This was certainly not the best circumstance for Blanca: “When he saw his daughter, Esteban Trueba was unable to restrain his evil character and he charged her with his horse, whip in the air, beating her mercilessly, lash upon lash, until the girl fell flat and rigid to the ground.” (199) Allende’s description of this horrific act is in such detail that the reader can feel Blanca’s pain, as she is being struck by the whip and is leveled to the ground. This act of beating his daughter is by far worse than launching his sister down a flight of stairs; this was his daughter, his child, his own blood. But again, the worst was still to come. When he brings Blanca home, the state that she was in obviously enraged her mother. After she washes up Blanca and helps her calm down, Clara goes to talk to Esteban, who right off the bat begins to “accuse [d] her of having raised Blanca without morals, without religion, without principles, like a libertine atheist, even worse, without a sense of her own class.” (200) This is slightly humorous because the irony is that Esteban can go around raping peasant girls, having sex with prostitutes, and beating on his own family, but accuse another of not having morals or principles. The ignorance of his own actions adds to the feelings of resentment the reader has towards Esteban. When Clara boldly decides to interrupt him, “Pedro Tercero Garcia hasn’t done a thing you haven’t done yourself, you also slept with unmarried women not of your class. The only difference is that he did it for love. And so did Blanca.” (200) Clara not only compares him to Pedro Tercero, but makes Pedro seem better because he did it for love, not lust. Yet again, Esteban is angered. But this time he takes it too far, and even he realizes it, when “he lost control and struck her in the face, knocking her against the wall.” (200) Again, going back to the lack of principles, Esteban needs to take a quick look at himself and see that he doesn’t hold too many principles himself.
From Esteban’s expulsion of Ferula to Blanca being relentlessly beaten to his striking of Clara, the same traits of Esteban are present. Each time the reader sees that Esteban is acting in a selfish manner because he was either jealous that Ferula found peace with his wife, Blanca found love outside of his social class, or that Clara made Pedro seem better than him. And in each case, his feelings of insecurity made him lash out in a violent way to an important member of his family. Every time, the reader’s resentment towards Esteban grew. Allende purposefully did this so that at the end she could make Esteban’s fall from power a quick and hard one; and when it happens, the reader takes pity on Esteban, but not in a compassionate way, more of feeling sorry for him, because after his loss he seeks help from the very prostitute he treated so horribly. After every horrible thing that Esteban did throughout the book, nothing made the reader begrudge him more than his dreadful acts against his own family.

Word Count: 1246
Work Cited
Allende, Isabel. The House of the Spirits. Trans. Magda Bogin. NY: Bantam
Books, 1986