The House of the Spirits Characters

Alba is one of the most important figures in the novel. In fact, we'd say she's a contender for the role of protagonist. This despite the fact that she's not even born until Chapter 9, over halfway...

Esteban Trueba is the only character to survive the course of the entire novel, so as you can imagine, he's a pretty big deal. Because Esteban Trueba lives such a long time, he's the character we s...

If this matriarchal family saga has a mother-of-all-mother-figures, it's Clara del Valle. One might say that Clara gives birth to the novel with the inaugural words: "Barrabás came to us by se...

The Trueba children, Blanca, Jaime, and Nicolás, all have their own supporting roles in this family saga, though none of the members of this generation figures as prominently in the overall pl...

Esteban's mother and sister are pretty much wretchedly miserable individuals. They're both characterized by a rigid morality that's associated with the Catholic Church. Doña Ester Trueba reads...

The repetition of the name Pedro amongst three generations of García men says a lot about the hold that patriarchal tradition has over the people of the countryside, and their slowness to acce...

Pancha, the first woman raped by Esteban Trueba at Tres Marías, never lets her grandson forget the indignity that was done to her, and to him, by the patrón. She names her son after her a...

Aside from acting as a foil to Férula Trueba (see our discussion of this under "Character Roles"), Tránsito plays an important function in the plot of the novel. The recipient of one of E...

There's a lot of mystery surrounding the Count. Is he a cultured aristocrat, as he claims, or a good-for-nothing fortune hunter? Clara and her tarot cards are unable to penetrate the secrets of his...

The members of the del Valle household are a cheerful lot. Despite the sadness of Rosa's accidental murder, Clara passes many happy years in the company of her parents, siblings, Nana, and, of cour...

Miguel, Alba's boyfriend, is a young, committed revolutionary with radical ideas. He advocates violent revolution in order to confront what he calls the violence of the system. Though his politics...

As we've mentioned before, the figure of the Poet can be none other than Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, a Marxist sympathizer who is considered to this day to be Chile's greatest poet (see "What's up...

Any time you see three women hanging out together in a work of literature, it's a good idea to ask yourself if they might represent the three Fates – the sisters in Greek mythology who spin,...

This novel contains three priestly characters, who offer very different portrayals of the Catholic Church. Father Restrepo, the overly-zealous Jesuit in the first chapter, stirs his disciples into...