Aura of Youth

The lines between past and present and real and imaginary are blurred in Aura.  First, I think the second person present style helps to establish this blurring between past and present.  It feels like present when read, but at the same time, it is written down from the beginning - inevitably an account of past events.  When Felipe Montero first meets the Senora, he describes her with "a face so old it's almost childlike" (Fuentes 17).  This paradox is continued throughout the book in the form of Aura, who is the manifestation of the youth inside of Consuelo.  They are often seen at different times, depending upon the context in while Montero sees them.  When being told information about the job, he sees her as the old lady, but when he is being invited into bed, he typically sees her as the beautiful young Aura. When they are seen together, they are eerily synchronized: "The girl nods and at the same time the old lady imitates her gesture." (25).  At first, Montero believes that Consuelo has some sort of spell over Aura and is trapping her inside the house, but it turns out the relationship is much stronger.  Aura is the youth inside the old lady, the youth that had died some 60 years ago along with her husband.  By hiring Montero to revise and complete her husband's memoirs she is trying to preserve that part of her life, her youthful days, as well as the memory of her husband.  Just as Aura is a youthful version of the old lady, Montero is filling the role of her dead husband, General Llorente.  Before Montero has agreed to anything of the sort, Senora Consuelo says "Then you'll stay here. Your room is upstairs." (23).  The preemptive use of your room suggests that the room has always been his - that the general's old room belongs to him.  She also says that he will "learn to write in [the general's] own style" (21), drawing even more comparison between the two. The most obvious comparison comes when Aura and Montero make love in the morning and she says "You're my husband." (77).  That one is pretty blatant.  When I first read it and didn't realize Aura and the old lady were one in the same, I didn't think anything of it, but now it is painfully obvious that, in a similar way, Montero and the general are on in the same.  Her husband supposedly died 60 years ago, but maybe he just left and is only coming back now to fall in love with his wife of the past all over again.