Bombal- New Islands

The first story in New Islands- The Final Mist was really incredible and a great introduction to Bombal, I think. In it she exposes a lot of the themes central to her writing- our relationship to nature, sexuality, alienation from our sexuality and from nature, patriarchal social norms like marriage(even to your cousin). Her writing style is so interesting. Even when she is not writing in first person, which is rare, she appears to be. She changes tenses and perspectives and stops to meditate often and in strange places. She speaks through her punctuation and it affects her tone incredibly. Her writing has a very stream-of-consciousness feel to it even though she maintains a story. It isn't character driven in a typical way, though we are always inside the protagonists head. It is about what events mean.

Her writing is so erotic... I imagine it was fairly shocking for the time and a definite signature of feminism and sexual empowerment. It was interesting to me though that while she clearly considers herself a feminist writer, her female characters seem, in the end, to need saved by a man. Or at least to be in such pain because they lack the love of a man. Also, out of curiosity I looked up a picture of her and was surprised to find that she had a very mod haircut and a total lack of "braids." She must have chosen not be tethered to the earth like she believes all females must be.


I thought it was interesting that even though The Final Mist and The Tree were so similar in subject matter, nature did not signify the same thing. In The Final Mist, the woman seems to be at war with nature- the fog, the lake(though she feels at home there, it also kills the gardener and keeps her from knowing the truth about the stranger), the storms. She finds solace in the warm bedrooms of the stranger's home and Daniel's where the outside is shrouded in fog and silence. In The Tree Brigida feels comforted by the tapping of the rubber tree. Though I guess, in the end, it was blocking the too-bright light from her dressing room and actually protecting her from the outside as well.

The Final Mist reminded me of a noir film or novel... Bombal is so dark. It's definitely a beautiful dark, but incredibly pessimistic. Just the final paragraph of The Final Mist was so sad.

"Following him toward an infinity of insignificant tasks; toward a thousand trifling amusements; following him to live correctly- to cry from habit and smile
out of duty; following him to die, one day, correctly.

Around us the fog settles over everything like a shroud."