The Enkidu Summer Conference 2008: Storytelling, Memories and Identity Constructions

México City, 3 - 7 July, 2008

Hija De La Fortuna: Myth, Memory And Identity In Construction

Nilanjana Bhattacharya

Department of Comparative Literature

Jadavpur University,

Kolkata, India.

The paper will focus on Isabel Allende’s (1942--) Hija de la fortuna (1999) to expatiate how this fiction explores the process of mythification of reality from a feminist perspective, that is, how an incident during the California gold rush was crafted into a myth (the paper will also explain the reason to call it a myth and not legend) and how a twentieth century Latin American author (i.e, Isabel Allende) deploys it from a completely different perspective, from the perspective of the ‘powerless’.

In this novel Allende has used the popular myth of Joaquin Murieta (or Murrieta, or Murietta) in a very subtle way. Although Joaquin Murieta is not the major protagonist of Hija, it revolves around the myth of Joaquin Murieta.

The central focus of the paper is to depict how the linguistic sign Murieta becomes the mythic sign Murieta; and how through using the popular myth of Joaquin Murieta as a catalyst, Allende actually lays bare various facets of power politics, such as patriarchy, class, race etc., and reveals the power politics inherent within the very process of mythification, and thereby challenges the very concept of individual identities.

The paper views feminism not as “a western movement” but as an endogenous, polyphonous upsurge related to other endogenous, political upsurges. It is the consciousness that individual identities are constructed, and therefore can be deconstructed. And the novel actually explores the very process of identity construction and deconstruction, and the role of memory in identity construction.

By revealing the politics inherent in the process of mythification of reality Allende also challenges the standard notion of ‘objective’ history as opposed to the lived reality of human beings. She depicts a history ‘from below’ which focuses on the perspective of the ‘powerless’ – be it political power, or power acquired by virtue of one’s class, gender or race. Thus by constructing an ‘alternative’ version of reality Allende also challenges the very notion of ‘fictionality’ attached to fiction.