Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Love is deception
In Aura a central idea is that lovers will always be together. It is this overbearing love that keeps Aura and the widow together and intertwined through the novel. As we progress through the novel we notice some interesting events take place, usually they are events that show a heavy set of similarities between Aura and the widow. Felipe, even though intrigued by these occurrences, overlooks them because of his passion for Aura. The real noticeable issue arises when Aura and Felipe become intimate one evening and shortly afterwards the widow's presence in the far side of the room becomes known. How is it that this woman could watch her relative make love to pretty much a stranger in her home? It does not seem logical or realistic for an event like this to occur. And to throw the reader for even more of a loop the two woman exit together and leave Felipe alone to sleep in what he believes is Aura's bedroom. To be quite honest it seems as though the widow herself received pleasure from watching her niece and Felipe entangled with one another. It is not until later in the novel that a possible reason for this is provided; it comes when Felipe views pictures of the Widow's past husband. Felipe notices that he has a striking resemblance to this one time army general. So in a way Aura is a way for the widow to reconnect with her dead husband. This makes somewhat logical sense, even if it is creepy, but the end of the novel brings a strange twist that leaves the reader stupefied. Felipe believes he is laying with his beloved Aura when it turns out to be the old widow. My conclusion by the end of the novel is that Aura is a deception, she is simply an image created by the widow to seduce Felipe in order for her to reconnect with her past lover. The love Aura has for Felipe is not real, the love Felipe has for Aura is based on a deception, and the love the widow has for her past husband is no longer existent and she begins to accept deceptive love as satisfying for her void that she suffers.
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This is an interesting perspective of Aura, but I believe that it is an accurate interpretation. Aura's niece's presence in the book is to replicate the love the widow has/once had for her husband. Analyzing Aura and Felipe allows her to fill the void in her heart by feeling the emotion she misses.
ReplyDeleteThe one part of this analysis that I disagree with is the part about him being like the general. While I may not have much backing on this accusation right now, I believe that this is a meta-textual element within the novel. He doesn't look like the general, he "is" the general. The memoirs, more importantly those about the general falling in love with Consuela, I believe to actually be the writings of Felipe and his love for Aura.
ReplyDeleteI know that this may sound crazy and kind of out there, plus I don't have much evidence to support it, but it's something that I felt especially given the text we have read so far this year.
I agree with Kurt. I believe that Felipe and the general are the same person. In class we discussed how rewriting the general's memoirs allows Felipe to "re-member" his own history, so that by the end of the novella he comes to realize that he actually is the general. And someone brought up the point that Felipe never sees the servant who supposedly retrieves his toiletries from his house, so maybe they were there the whole time, implying that he really did live there. Also, Felipe seems to experience glimpses of the past, such as when he sees the garden which Consuelo says no longer exists (63). Most likely he is recalling these images from his memory.
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