Clara’s Notebooks Symbol in The House of the Spirits

Clara keeps a series of notebooks in The House of the Spirits, which she claims bear witness to her life, and these notebooks symbolize the importance of recording history and preserving the past. From a young age, Clara habitually writes down all of life’s events, both big and small, and her notebooks are later used by her family (specifically Clara’s husband, Esteban, and her granddaughter, Alba) to “reclaim the past” and “overcome terrors.” Throughout Clara’s life, she writes everything in her notebooks—which she organizes by event because she never records the date—and then promptly forgets about them. She refuses to repeat names within her family (Clara won’t name her son Esteban after her husband or allow her daughter, Blanca, to name her own daughter Clara) because it creates confusion in her notebooks. “Memory is fragile,” Clara claims, and her notebooks allow her “to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory.”

When Alba is detained and tortured by the police during the coup d’état, she tries to summon Clara’s spirit to help her die. Clara’s spirit does come to Alba, but instead of helping her die, Clara suggests that Alba “write in her mind” a testimony of the terrible events unfolding in their country, so those who want to ignore them will know the truth. Later, at a concentration camp for women, Ana Díaz gives Alba a notebook, in which Alba immediately records her experiences. Again, the notebook represents the importance of preserving one’s story for posterity. After Alba is released from police custody, Esteban suggests they write down their stories. When his story is finished, Esteban dies peacefully, free of the torments that plagued him in life. “The space of a life is brief,” Clara writes, and it passes “so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events.” Recording the past allows one to “gauge the consequences of our acts,” which is exactly what Allende’s characters attempt to do in The House of the Spirits.

Clara’s Notebooks Quotes in The House of the Spirits

The The House of the Spirits quotes below all refer to the symbol of Clara’s Notebooks. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Class, Politics, and Corruption Theme Icon

Barrabás came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. She was already in the habit of writing down important matters, and afterward, when she was mute, she also recorded trivialities, never suspecting that fifty years later I would use her notebooks to reclaim the past and overcome terrors of my own.

Related Characters: Alba de Satigny (speaker), Clara del Valle/Trueba, Barrabás, Marcos

Related Symbols: Clara’s Notebooks

Page Number and Citation: 1

Explanation and Analysis:

At times Clara would accompany her mother and two or three of her suffragette friends on their visits to factories, where they would stand on soapboxes and make speeches to the women who worked there while the foremen and bosses, snickering and hostile, observed them from a prudent distance. Despite her tender age and complete ignorance of matters of this world, Clara grasped the absurdity of the situation and wrote in her notebook about the contrast of her mother and her friends, in their fur coats and suede boots, speaking of oppression, equality, and rights to a sad, resigned group of hard-working women in denim aprons, their hands red with chilblains.

Related Characters: Clara del Valle/Trueba, Nívea del Valle

Related Symbols: Clara’s Notebooks

Page Number and Citation: 91

Explanation and Analysis:

I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously—as the three Mora sisters said, who could see the spirits of ail eras mingled in space. That’s why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory.

Related Characters: Alba de Satigny (speaker), Clara del Valle/Trueba, Pancha García, The Mora Sisters

Related Symbols: Clara’s Notebooks

Page Number and Citation: 480

Explanation and Analysis:

Clara’s Notebooks Symbol Timeline in The House of the Spirits

The timeline below shows where the symbol Clara’s Notebooks appears in The House of the Spirits. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

“Barrabás came to us by sea,” Clara writes neatly in her notebook. She records all important matters—trivial matters, too—but she doesn’t know that the unnamed narrator will... (full context)

...for many years to come. Clara, however, simply writes of Father Restrepo’s words in her notebook and forgets them. Clara’s “mental powers” are nothing out of the ordinary for the del... (full context)

...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... (full context)

...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... (full context)

...if there is a place for her at Tres Marías, and she writes in her notebook that the hacienda is her “mission in life.” She can sense the peasants’ fear and... (full context)

...her life. She tells Clara her deepest secrets and thoughts, and Clara writes in her notebook that Férula loves her far more than she deserves or can ever repay. (full context)

...begins having visions and talking to ghosts again, and she spends hours writing in her notebook. It is clear to everyone that she is pregnant again, and Férula is furious. She... (full context)

...be named Esteban, but Clara won’t hear of it. Repeated names confuse things in her notebooks, which she says bear “witness to her life.” (full context)

...doesn’t tend to any domestic matters. Clara begins to walk in her sleep, and her notebooks, which bear “witness to life,” become sloppy and nonsensical. (full context)

...and need for her increases, but she spends all her time alone, writing in her notebooks. Esteban stops trying to build a relationship with Blanca, who has resisted him since birth.... (full context)

...pregnant, and Clara confirms that she thinks so, too, so she writes it in her notebook. Nicolás composes a cryptic message, and when a confused telegraph operator calls Esteban with the... (full context)

...her. They write each other daily, and these many letters take the place of Clara’s notebooks for a time. Jaime and Nicolás grow apart, too: while Jaime is busy studying medicine,... (full context)

...her happiness is written in the stars, and Clara writes about the birth in her notebook. She pastes a lock of Alba’s greenish hair in the pages, along with some fingernail... (full context)

...who suspects her upcoming death, and she immediately begins to prepare. She gathers all her notebooks and arranges them according to event, as she never records the date. She writes letters... (full context)

...pain. Since Esteban’s death, Alba has opened Clara’s bedroom, and she sits writing in a notebook in the middle of the room, a canary in a cage in the corner and... (full context)

...never let her be alone. She told him about Ana Díaz, who gave Alba a notebook to write in and helped her to remember that she wasn’t the only woman who... (full context)

Alba writes in the notebook, just as Clara did, because memory fails and life is short. It is difficult to... (full context)

The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende

Clara’s Notebooks Symbol Analysis

Clara’s Notebooks Quotes in The House of the Spirits

Clara’s Notebooks Symbol Timeline in The House of the Spirits