The House of the Spirits: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Clara is 10 years old when she decides to stop speaking. Severo and Nívea call Dr. Cuevas, but his failed treatments only manage to terrify Clara. Finally, Severo and Nívea take Clara to see a Rumanian magician named Rostipov, who tells them that Clara does not speak because she doesn’t want to. Clara’s parents are forced to remove her from the convent school where all the del Valle girls were educated, and she begins homeschooling. She is especially interested in reading: she reads all of Marcos’s old books and Severo’s Liberal Party pamphlets. She also writes diligently in her notebooks, which, Esteban narrates, is a good thing, since he will later use the notebooks to reclaim Clara’s memory.

Clara has a knack for interpreting dreams, and she can foretell the future and intuit people’s intentions. She predicts earthquakes and unusual weather, and warns Severo when a business partner plans to swindle him. Severo, however, doesn’t listen, and he is relieved of half his money. Nana believes that Clara’s powers will resolve when she begins to menstruate, but that milestone comes and goes, and Clara’s powers only grow. Severo forbids Clara to predict the future or talk to ghosts, and Dr. Cuevas recommends cold baths and electric shocks, the accepted treatment in Europe for insanity.

Barrabás follows Clara everywhere, and if Clara isn’t foretelling the future or knitting (the only domestic skill Clara masters), she is listening to one of Nívea’s many stories of their family’s past. Nívea points to old pictures of dead relatives and tells little anecdotes, like those about Clara’s uncle, who accidentally farted in public and was forced to leave the country in humiliation. He went to Easter Island to minister to the lepers and was never seen or heard from again.

Nívea takes Clara to the city tenements to give food and clothing to the poor. Other times, Nívea takes her to stand on soapboxes with Nívea’s suffragette friends. Later, Clara writes in her notebook how absurd it is that her mother and her friends speak of oppression and equality while wearing fur coats and suede boots. Time passes and Clara grows into a young woman, and one day she finally breaks her silence. Clara tells her parents that she will soon be married to Rosa’s fiancé, Esteban.

In the meantime, Esteban arrives at the city station. He has been gone for years, and the city looks unfamiliar. He decides that the place is a “shithole” and goes to meet Férula, who looks much older to Esteban and gives off an aura of sadness. She immediately takes Esteban to see Doña Ester, and when Férula opens the door, Esteban is struck by the smell of medicine and rotting flesh. He goes to greet his mother, sitting semi-upright in the bed as usual, but she stops him. Férula explains that it is the smell. “It clings,” she says.

Esteban pulls the covers back from Doña Ester’s legs and exposes her ulcerated flesh, loaded with maggots and flies. Doña Ester says the doctors want to amputate, but she is too old for all that and prefers simply to die. Esteban grows visibly upset, and his mother makes him promise to marry and have a nice family. He is 35 years old, and it is time he settles down, Doña Ester says. Two days later, Doña Ester dies, but Esteban isn’t there because he has gone to Severo del Valle’s house to see if he has any more available daughters. That night, Férula and Esteban find their mother dead with a smile on her face.

Severo explains to Esteban that his daughters are each married, nuns, or sick. Clara is the right age to marry, but she sees ghosts and doesn’t speak. Esteban isn’t afraid of ghosts and considers a mute wife a good thing, so he asks to meet Clara. When Nívea brings Clara out to meet Esteban, Clara says that she has been expecting him and immediately asks if he wants to marry her. Nívea and Severo are mortified, but Esteban doesn’t seem to mind and says he indeed wants to marry her. Clara escorts him outside, and Esteban knows that she has accepted him. What Esteban doesn’t know, however, is that Clara has already resigned to marry without love.

A few months after Doña Ester’s death, Clara and Esteban announced their engagement with a lavish party. As Clara and Esteban dance beneath the lighted canopies, Clara is so happy that she fails to hear the whispered warnings of the spirits. As the night comes to an end and Clara begins to pay more attention to the spirits, she realizes it has been hours since she last saw Barrabás. Suddenly, a scream of horror cuts through the crowd, and the people part as Barrabás, stumbling with a large knife buried in his back, lumbers toward Clara. He falls dead at her feet, and Nívea and Severo are terrified at such a bad omen.

The next year is spent preparing for the wedding. Nívea meticulously packs Clara’s wedding trunks, filling them with the latest fashions, but Clara shows little interest. At the same time, Esteban begins construction on the biggest, most luxurious home the city has ever seen. He hires a French architect, lays Italian marble floors, and imports the finest furnishings and draperies from around the world. As she watches, Férula grows more and more irate. It is a sin, she says, to spend money on “nouveau riche vulgarities” and ignore the poor.

Esteban cares nothing about architecture or design, but he wants his new house, which quickly becomes known as “the big house on the corner,” to reflect himself and his family. Esteban insists the house be fabulous, and it must reveal the prestige that generations of his family will enjoy. Little does Esteban know that the house will grow to include twisted staircases that lead to dead ends, hanging doors, and crooked hallways. Esteban doesn’t know that Clara will build new rooms for each of her eccentric guests, that she will order complete walls and rooms demolished on the recommendations of spirits, or that the house will eventually violate several state and city laws. Despite this, Clara never goes to see the house during its construction.

After Doña Ester’s death, Férula finds herself alone with nothing to do. She is too old to hope to marry, and she is completely dependent on Esteban, but he doesn’t invite her to move into the big house on the corner. Férula knows that Clara is incompetent in domestic matters and won’t be able to run such a large house, so she decides to befriend her new sister-in-law in hopes that Clara will invite her to live with them. One day, the two women go to lunch, and Clara reaches tenderly across the table and grabs Férula’s hand. “Don’t worry,” Clara says. “You’re going to live with us and the two of us will be just like sisters.”

Clara and Esteban are married in a modest ceremony, and Esteban falls madly in love with Clara. He vows that Clara will love him as he needs to be loved, even if he must take it from her with “extreme measures.” Esteban knows that Clara can never belong to him because she belongs to the spirit world of ghosts and objects that move “of their own volition.” Still, he wants more than her body; he wants the most intimate parts of her. With Clara, Esteban’s hands feel too heavy and his voice is too harsh. His old desire to rape women remains, but he is prepared to seduce Clara if he must.

Three months later, Esteban and Clara return from their honeymoon to Férula and the big house on the corner. Clara looks around the house quickly and says only that it is “very lovely.” Esteban tells Clara to look down, and she notices that she is standing on a rug made of Barrabás. She takes one look into the dog’s glass eyes and faints. Férula reminds Esteban that she said Clara would hate the rug, and they roll it up and take it the basement, placing it next to Marcos’s old trunks.

Clara soon becomes pregnant, and Férula tends to her with close attention. After so long with Doña Ester, all Férula knows is taking care of others, so she lovingly bathes Clara, powders her, and brushes her hair. Esteban returns to Tres Marías, and while he is gone, the big house on the corner settles into a “gentle routine without men.” Férula hates when Esteban returns from the country, filling the house with his rough ways, disrupting the “harmony” established in his absence. Hatred for Esteban consumes Férula, so she goes to confession and tells the priest she has committed a sin. She says that her sister-in-law is an angel and that she wants to climb into bed with her and feel her warmth. Férula claims she listens at Esteban and Clara’s bedroom door, and that she even watches them having sex through a crack in the door.

Clara has endless conversations with her unborn baby and declares the child will be a girl named Blanca. Long after Clara’s due date, Dr. Cuevas realizes that Clara has no intention of having her baby, so he delivers the child by cesarean section. Blanca is born hairy and ugly, looking much like an armadillo. Esteban is horrified by the sight of his new child and thinks his wife has birthed “a monster, and a female one to boot.” With time and Clara’s milk, Blanca transforms into an “almost pretty child,” and Férula is so busy taking care of her that she doesn’t have time to listen at Clara and Esteban’s door.