SOURCE: “Social Denunciation in the Language of “El Arbol” [The Tree] by María Luisa Bombal,” in Latin American Literary Review, Vol. IV, No. 9, Fall-Winter, 1976, pp. 70-6.

In the following essay, which was translated from Spanish by Ellen Wilkerson, Valdivieso explores the symbolic value of the tree in Bombal's short story.

Among Chile's outstanding women writers, Maria Luisa Bombal is perhaps the most complex and permanent figure. Born in Viña del Mar, Chile, she studied at the Sorbonne, returned to Chile, and then settled in Buenos Aires. Her first stories, “Las islas nuevas” [“The New Islands”], and “El arbol” [“The Tree”], were published in the Argentine review, Sur. In 1935 the publishing house of that magazine brought out a volume of short stories titled La ultima niebla, [The House of Mist], and, in 1938, the novel, La amortajada [The Shrouded Woman]. Recently she has returned to her country, and...