Family and Inheritance

Throughout the novel, Allende uses Violeta’s life as a frame through which to explore the inherently interwoven nature of familial love. As she enters a haze during the drum ritual for her mother’s death, Violeta feels that “there was neither present nor past, and at the same time I was part of everything in existence” (101). In many ways, her experience here serves as a microcosm of her attitudes toward family in general. “Past,” “present,” and future intermingle throughout the novel; Violeta appears to pay equal heed to all temporal periods. She observes the ghost of her mother and, on her deathbed, notes that her deceased daughter “has come to get me” (319). At the same moment, she wishes her grandson “Godspeed” (319), as if already imagining his future. Violeta, through her attention to both the past and the future, gestures towards a radical nonlinearity...