99 pages • 3 hours read
Isabel AllendeThe House of the Spirits
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Lovers”
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains mentions of graphic violence and abortion.
In Blanca’s 14th year, her relationship with Pedro Tercero moves beyond friendship. Blanca vows to marry Pedro Tercero one day, but Pedro Tercero says nothing, knowing how impossible that would be. The two spend the summer in each other’s company, but their interactions change; they are shyer and more embarrassed around each other, and they take care to hide their friendship from the elders’ eyes.
One evening Férula appears at the Trueba house. While the family is eating dinner she bursts into the room, walks silently to Clara, kisses her on the forehead, and leaves. Clara is the only one who realizes that this is an apparition, and she tells the family that Férula is dead. Father Antonio, the local priest who has been delivering Esteban’s payments to Férula, takes Esteban and Clara to her place of residence. It is a small, dark, and dingy house in an impoverished alley; Férula is lying dead in her bed. The group finds unopened envelopes of money from Esteban, and Clara gives it all to the priest for charitable works. Esteban is furious and feels immensely guilty at how his sister was living; Clara explains that Férula chose to do so because, although she had money, “[S]he didn’t have anything else” (170).
Blanca and Pedro Tercero write to each other throughout the year and anticipate their summer reunion with growing eagerness. Pedro Tercero also begins to think and talk about revolutionary ideas much more. Under the influence of Father José Dulce María, a local priest with socialist leanings, he learns to translate his ideas into song. Inspired by the story his grandfather told him long ago, Pedro Tercero composes a song about hens that overthrow a fox. Esteban learns that Pedro Tercero is spreading revolutionary ideas among the peasants and personally whips the boy, warning him against continuing to do so. This same summer Blanca and Pedro Tercero begin to meet by the river every night to make love.
Three years later, Clara begins to have nightmares and predicts an earthquake of unprecedented magnitude; however, her worries are brushed aside. When it strikes days later, the house caves in above Esteban, trapping him under the rubble for hours; when Clara and Pedro Segundo finally pull him out, most of his bones are broken. Pedro García arrives, checks him over, and asserts that Esteban will die if he is moved; remembering the old man’s way with the ants, Esteban listens to him. Pedro García slowly sets and splints all of Esteban’s broken bones in a way that doctors later pronounce miraculous. In the city, the fright of the earthquake kills Nana in her bed.
Esteban spends the next four months in bandages and splints, unable to move. Blanca and the boys are sent to boarding school, and Clara remains at Tres Marías to care for Esteban. Without Nana, Férula, or Esteban to rely on, Clara becomes more attentive to material things and the running of the house. She begins to fear and despise Esteban, whose condition worsens his bad temper, and finds companionship and support in Pedro Segundo, who helps her run things at Tres Marías. Meanwhile, Pedro Tercero begins to distribute revolutionary writings and pamphlets once again.
Blanca falls ill, and the nuns at school want to send her home. Clara travels to collect Blanca, where she divines that Blanca’s sickness is a result of being apart from Pedro Tercero and her family. Mother and daughter go back to their house in the city, which is in disarray without Nana to keep an eye over the servants. Clara dismisses the entire staff, and she and Blanca clean and close down the house. They find Nana’s few possessions, which include the costumes she used to wear to scare Clara out of her muteness. Clara weeps for Nana and at the irony of it having been Nana who died of fright.
After returning to Tres Marías, Clara and Blanca are greeted by an ill-tempered Esteban in a makeshift wheelchair. At dinner he rants about Pedro Tercero, whom he has fired for spreading socialist ideas. Despite his dismissal, Blanca continues to meet Pedro Tercero at night at their usual spot by the river; meanwhile, Pedro Tercero grows into a beloved hero among the local peasants.
Blanca continues to fake illnesses to prevent being sent back to school. Pedro García teaches her how to mold clay as a way for her to remain active, and Blanca discovers that she enjoys it. Upon Clara’s suggestion, Blanca begins to make crèches filled with fantastical creatures similar to the ones her aunt Rosa used to embroider on the tablecloth. The crèches become a huge tourist attraction, and Blanca’s skill with clay serves her well at a later point in her life.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Revenge”
A year and a half after the earthquake, Tres Marías is restored to its past glory. Esteban’s long illness leaves his disposition worsened, but desperation gives him strength to eventually begin walking again. He does not have a good relationship with Blanca; he also notices Clara drawing further away from him. She places a bolt on the bedroom door and does not let Esteban in her bed anymore. Despite this, Esteban’s love for and desire to possess Clara only grows. He also notices that he is beginning to shrink.
The country prepares for the presidential elections that year, and Esteban meets a Frenchman, Count Jean de Satigny, at a dinner for conservative politicians. A polished, aristocratic man, Satigny soon becomes a frequent guest at Tres Marías. One night, the count witnesses Blanca stealing away from her room and guesses that she has a lover. The next day he asks Esteban for Blanca’s hand in marriage; Blanca furiously refuses, telling Esteban she will never change her mind.
The twins arrive at Tres Marías that year. Jaime and Nicolás have grown to be extremely different from each other. Jaime is unsociable but exceptionally kind; he is studying to become a doctor for the needy and forms a secret friendship with Pedro Tercero, whose ideas he admires greatly. Nicolás is exceptionally intelligent, with an interest in women and the supernatural. His interest in the latter was ignited by a similarly inclined young woman named Amanda, whom he met some years earlier.
Pedro García dies a few days before the presidential elections. He is discovered dead by Blanca, with no one around him but his great-grandson, Esteban García. García is Pancha García’s grandson from her illegitimate child with Esteban Trueba. The 10-year-old boy hates the Trueba family deeply; his grandmother has led him to believe that if his father had been born in place of Blanca or the twins, he would have inherited Tres Marías someday.
Esteban orders a grand internment and funeral for Pedro García. A huge crowd flocks to attend, amongst it Pedro Tercero disguised as a priest. Blanca secretly meets with Pedro Tercero that night, who speaks with the peasants and urges them to vote for the Socialist candidate in the upcoming elections. However, the peasants are afraid of retaliation from their masters and keep their distance when the Socialist candidate, “a charismatic, nearsighted doctor who could move huge crowds with his passionate speeches” (214), arrives in town.
The count continues to spy on Blanca. One night, he follows Blanca to the river and finds her and Pedro Tercero naked and asleep together. The count rushes back and immediately alerts Esteban, who realizes from the count’s descriptions that Pedro Tercero came disguised as a priest for his grandfather’s funeral.
Furious, Esteban rides out to meet Blanca and whips her unconscious in his rage. When he returns home with an injured and bloody Blanca, Clara is horrified. When Clara defends Blanca and Pedro Tercero, Esteban strikes her for the first time and knocks out her teeth. From this point on, Clara never speaks to Esteban again. Despite his profuse apologies, she removes her wedding ring, reverts back to her maiden name, and takes Blanca back to the city with her. Pedro Segundo helps the mother and daughter board the train; then he too leaves the estate for good.
Esteban’s loneliness has him alternating between fits of rage and uncontrollable tears. He spends his energies trying to find Pedro Tercero, whom he blames for the falling-out with his family. Esteban García comes to Esteban with news of Pedro Tercero’s location. The two set out on horseback and find Pedro Tercero in an abandoned saw mill. Esteban flings an axe at Pedro Tercero, cutting off three of his fingers, before Pedro Tercero escapes. Esteban immediately regrets his violent urges and sends García away with a slap, forbidding the boy from telling anyone what happened; this leaves García weeping in rage.
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Brothers”
Clara and Blanca arrive back at the house in the city and set about rehiring servants and organizing the place. The Mora sisters reappear, and Clara’s spiritualist crowd begins to frequent the house again. Blanca is discovered to be pregnant. Esteban comes to the city, bringing along the count, whom he has strong-armed into marrying Blanca with the promise of a substantial financial arrangement. Esteban tells Blanca that he has killed Pedro Tercero, which leads her to weep inconsolably but also accept her arranged marriage. A grand wedding takes place two weeks later, after which the couple moves to the north as arranged by Esteban. Before Blanca leaves, Clara tells her that Pedro Tercero is still alive; this finally stops Blanca’s tears.
Esteban begins to turn his attentions and energy to politics, coming out in full support of the Conservative Party. Clara wordlessly communicates to Esteban that he will win the elections, and he is voted senator a few days later. Despite the silence between husband and wife, the hostility fades, and Clara begins to communicate with him through the servants and accompany him to social events. Esteban’s fortune grows despite Clara’s innumerable charitable works. He also continues to shrink and even takes a trip to the United States to meet with doctors; they are unable to find anything wrong and conclude that he must have imagined himself to once have been six feet tall.
Father José Dulce María takes in Pedro Tercero, healing his wounds and uplifting his spirit. Pedro Tercero teaches himself to play the guitar with his remaining fingers and continues to compose revolutionary songs, for which he eventually becomes famous.
Nicolás continues to indulge in psychic experiments, smoking hashish with Amanda. Jaime lives an increasingly austere and reclusive life surrounded by nothing but his books, intent on helping everyone he can through his medical training and with his mother’s help. He is secretly in love with Amanda but refuses to admit it even to himself, as she is his brother’s girlfriend. Amanda frequents the Trueba household regularly with her younger brother, Miguel, of whom she is extremely protective; she will one day give her life for him.
Following Esteban’s political success, Jaime changes his last name; Esteban allows it as he is tired of his son’s eccentricities being associated with the family name. Nicolás becomes obsessed with the idea of flight, just like his great-uncle Marcos was. He constructs a hot air balloon to carry out his plan, but Clara predicts that it will not take off; his attempts fall flat when policemen demand a city permit for the balloon, which Nicolás is unable to obtain.
Nicolás realizes that in this time he has not seen Amanda and goes to visit her. He finds her lying in bed looking sickly, and Amanda informs him that she is pregnant. She tells Nicolás to ask Jaime for help with the abortion. Jaime agrees to help Nicolás and Amanda, even though he is privately furious with his brother. He performs the operation in the clinic on a Sunday, and Nicolás and Jaime bring Amanda home to recover. Clara takes her in and cares for her; Miguel comes along and will eventually end up witnessing Alba’s birth.
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Count”
Blanca and the count settle in a mansion in the north. They never consummate the marriage but get along fairly well. The count sets up the back rooms with his photography equipment; Blanca is not allowed in these rooms, and he keeps them perpetually locked. Besides this, she lives in relative comfort, though she finds the staff’s behavior odd and disconcerting; both the count and Clara reassure her that she is imagining things owing to the heat and her pregnancy.
The count begins to illegally excavate and trade in Incan relics. Of all the relics that pass through the house, only the mummies disturb Blanca. These give her nightmares, and she imagines them creeping through the corridors at night. She even hears strange moans but tells herself that she is imagining them. However, she begins to dread the nights and confides in the count one evening over dinner. The count and the attending servant initially react in shock, but the former goes on to insist that Blanca is hallucinating. The reaction makes Blanca suspicious. She stays awake that night and watches a tiny figure moving down the hall; she follows it to her husband’s photography den, from which she hears moans and laughter.
The next day, when the count is away, Blanca sends the servants on an errand and breaks open the lock on the den. Inside, she finds erotic photographs of the servants in all manner of costumes and positions. Horrified, Blanca immediately packs her bags and leaves for the station to take the train home.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
Multiple turning points emerge in these chapters, a number of them following the earthquake, which physically and symbolically shifts the earth beneath the feet of the story and its characters. Esteban breaks all the bones in his body, which need complete resetting; Clara descends from the elevated plane she usually inhabits and begins to take charge of material and domestic matters; Pedro Tercero ramps up his efforts to spread socialist ideology amongst the peasants. The earthquake thus becomes a plot point and a symbol, marking a number of physical, psychological, and ideological changes.
With Esteban in particular, interpersonal relationships begin to change significantly. His marriage deteriorates after the earthquake. His injuries make him more ill-tempered, and Clara is more mindful of his character now that she is more present in his life; she begins to fear and detest him, and she almost completely breaks ties with him after he strikes her for defending Blanca. Esteban’s relationship with Blanca is impacted by Pedro Tercero’s presence in both of their lives. Blanca’s love for Pedro Tercero has always ensured a distance between father and daughter, and Esteban’s vigorous opposition to the latter’s ideology is an added complication. Pedro Tercero is a combination of the worst things Esteban could have imagined for his daughter: a man of a lower social class and a socialist. Things begin to unravel the moment Blanca and Pedro Tercero become romantically involved, and the subsequent discoveries of their affair and Blanca’s pregnancy drive a wedge between father and daughter.
Esteban’s interactions with Pedro Tercero are significant to the story in other ways: His anger with Pedro Tercero causes him to lose Pedro Segundo, one of his most trusted employees, who leaves Tres Marías when he sees Esteban’s wrath at Blanca’s affair. It also leads him to meet García for the first time, though Esteban does not know the boy is his grandson. García’s information is what leads Esteban to Pedro Tercero; Esteban does not succeed in killing the latter but chops off three fingers. This act, as well as Esteban’s harsh dismissal of García, takes on significance later in the story.
In addition to cataclysmic changes in Esteban’s life, the earthquake also brings about Nana’s death. Her passing away is an instance of irony highlighting a connection within the story; Nana used to attempt to scare Clara out of her muteness as a child, and it is finally Nana who dies of fright. A number of other narrative connections emerge within these chapters: Rosa’s magical creatures are reborn in Blanca’s creations for the crèches, and Marcos’s fascination for flight resurges in Nicolás. Generational links feature outside of the family as well, with Miguel—Alba’s eventual love interest—witnessing Alba’s birth.
Miguel is another significant character introduced in these chapters, alongside his sister (Amanda) and Count Jean de Satigny. Not much is known yet about Miguel, but Amanda is fleshed out more as Nicolás’s girlfriend and the woman whom Jaime is secretly in love with. The novel also foreshadows her eventual death, hinting at Miguel and her playing a part later in the story.
Count Jean de Satigny, though appearing relatively briefly, is instrumental to the plot in many ways: It is the count who alerts Esteban to Blanca and Pedro Tercero’s affair, which sets into motion a number of other events, including Clara’s estrangement from Esteban and García’s growing hatred for the Truebas. It is also the count who provides Esteban with a way to legitimize Blanca’s child by marrying her while she is pregnant.
Jaime and Nicolás, who grow up far differently than their father ever imagined, feature more prominently in these chapters. Although there is no decisive turning point in the relationship between father and sons, there is an irony in Esteban having sent the twins away to receive a certain kind of (upper-class, traditionalist, imperialist, etc.) education only for them to return with ideas antithetical to their father’s. Nicolás, although has inherited none of his mother’s supernatural abilities, displays all of the related eccentricities. Jaime, on the other hand, grows increasingly enamored of socialist ideas, even striking up a secret friendship with Pedro Tercero.
Politics continue to significantly influence the story. The presidential elections are mentioned, and a socialist candidate appears for the first time. His character is based on Salvador Allende, Chile’s 28th president and the first socialist candidate elected in a Latin American liberal democracy. Esteban also actively enters politics, becoming a senator. His political presence and activities will impact the del Valle women in numerous ways as the story unfolds, just as Severo’s aspirations impacted Rosa at the beginning of the story. It is significant that while Severo was a Liberal Party member, Esteban supports the Conservative Party. Although politics and ideology form the context for a continuing saga of familial vengeance, it is not a particular ideology that is at fault but rather human beings’ violent and hateful instincts.
Another idea that these chapters explore is that of physical love. Earlier chapters witnessed Esteban’s rapes of tenants and solicitation of sex workers; even with Clara, he regarded lovemaking as his spousal right. These chapters instead depict sex as naturally unfolding within relationships such as Blanca and Pedro Tercero’s or Nicolás and Amanda’s. Clara also withholds sex from Esteban as their relationship deteriorates. These instances paint physical intimacy as something shared between two people who hold affection and respect for each other, but the erotic pictures Blanca comes across in the count’s secret den hint at a darker side to sex. In this manner, physical intimacy and sex take on multiple expressions and feature in multiple contexts throughout the book.
Elements of magical realism continue to interweave with the story. Férula’s reappearance, and Clara’s divination of what it means, is one example; Esteban’s mysterious shrinking upon Férula’s death is another. Pedro García manages to reset Esteban’s bones following the earthquake in a manner doctors deem miraculous; this is in keeping with the old man’s penchant for the mystical, as seen earlier with his ability to dismiss a plague with a few words.
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