In this study, we interpret Isabel Allende's La casa de los espiritus as a microcosm that portrays a patriarchal society. Our purpose is to study the underlying principles that support this patriarchal order and examine the mechanisms that perpetuate it and repress the potential for change. The objective is then to analyze the main female characters since they constitute a subversive presence which is constantly challenging the patriarchal order and which is potentially capable of transforming it. Our goal is also to demonstrate that the writing of the female characters undermine patriarchal discourse. Our final objective is to examine the novel in the context of two "histories": the consecrated male history which is deconstructed here and the extra-official or alternative one that tradition silences and that is represented here by the writing of the female characters.

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This study examines the image of house and home as the reification of our domains as living, dwelling, housed beings in three novels: Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits; Anne-Marie MacDonald's Fall On Your Knees; and Toni Morrison's Beloved. Being human, we form through perception, build through forming, dwell in building, and perceive through dwelling. Through close reading and analysis, this thesis examines questions of: If we are how we dwell, then what happens when the structures and the spaces of our dwellings become haunted? What happens when "home" becomes a facade that suspends necessary elements of dwelling? This study projects that if we are how we dwell, the very nature of our being entails a constant questioning of what it is we allow a presence to in our how we form, build, dwell, and perceive within both tangible and intangible realms and the influential perspicacity literature bears within this process.

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M.A. (English) / The main focus of study in this dissertation is the magic realism of Isabel Allende as it pertains to gender politics, specifically in the oppressive fascist regime of revolutionary Chile at the time at which her novels are set. Her narrative technique is identified and related to the environment of which she writes, with a view to associating it with the gender aspect of politics. The socio-political climate in Chile, certainly in the decades ot the 1960s and 1970s, incorporated elements of fascism, oppression and sexism: Allende successfully adapts most of her female characters to the revolution and its effects ...