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Rather than an objective evaluation of this novel as a work of literary fiction, this rating and review is more a reflection of how deeply it has continued to affect me over the years. Despite the differences of time and place, customs and traditions, exposure and beliefs, there is something very primitive about the bonds I share with Eliza Sommers. And to some extent, to the English colony in Valparaiso, Chile, where this story is set, in the first half of the 19th century. I am too strongly affected by my affiliation to Eliza to condemn this novel to what it truly is, though I will deal with that part too. It has struck too deep a chord in my heart, so consider this as much a disclaimer for what is to come as an admission of my deviation from objectivity.

I read this first in 2007, and though, with repeated readings I almost know it by heart, I keep on revisiting it in my quest to draw strength from obscure, invisible, intangible sources. It is about a girl growing wings in a cage that is supposed to keep them clipped. Some birds are simply not meant to fly, in others� eyes. The bird will sing in its native tongue, perhaps a song of anguish, which its captors will take for one of joy. For the bird is supposed to entertain, not to be entertained. To comfort, not to be comforted. But people forget, that a clipped bird no longer sings. It only croons. Or refuses to sing at all.

We enter Valparaiso, a British Colony on the Chilean coast in the early 1800s, where women went about in stiff corsets, learning piano and housekeeping, straining their lungs out to be sweet, capable, subservient. Men, as Mama Fresia, the Mapucho cook of the Sommers family warned Eliza, “did what they pleased to women�, so that the honor of the women was solely at the discretion of her own self. While Eliza, an orphan brought up by the Sommers, begins to grow invisible wings, defiant of the stifling customs in her own silent, stubborn way, it falls to Rose, the sole woman in the family, to keep an eye on her, following her own indiscretion at the age of 18 with a German composer that had sentenced her to singlehood in a foreign country, where she secretly mourned the consequences of stepping out of the line of decency.

With Eliza unwittingly following the same course in the throes of young, passionate love and her lover Joaquin Andieta, a poor man fired with the ideas of revolution and a poet at heart, leaving Chile for California to try his luck in the Gold Rush, Rose descends into her own memories of her first wild love. Determined to pull Eliza out, she realizes it is too late, for Eliza has disappeared, and is most probably following her lover.

It is Eliza’s four-year long journey in an inhospitable, unruly, wild but free land that shapes her, and makes her fully aware of what she is. Dressed as a mute boy, with Tao Chi’en, the Chinese healer mourning for his dead, beloved wife Lin, Eliza heads out to find in the anonymous masses her lover, embarking on a journey that will not take her to him in the way she had wished. The journey of the search for her love transforms gradually into a journey of self-discovery, of little-by-little, discarding the vestiges and bondages of the cage that constrained her. Her quest for reuniting with her man leads her to him, but in ways she had never imagined when she started out pregnant with his baby at the age of sixteen. She finds her love, but it turns out to be very different from that of her dreams.

What interested me most were the quick pace of the work, the historical fiction aspect of it and the feminist slant to it. Although I don’t dislike Austen, I’m not particularly fond of her either (she writes way better than Allende), because I cannot relate to any of her heroines � they come across as stereotypes to me, which I’m not very sympathetic to. Allende’s writing is modest � I surely do not consider it her strong point. But it is for the most part simple but adequate in its pace, and devoid of lofty pretensions. Or maybe, it is just the translation which makes it a bit bland for my liking - maybe the original in Spanish is far better. So I'm inclined to give it the benefit of doubt.

She ties the strands expertly, not allowing for logical lapses, which are another pet peeve of mine � I prefer stories that do not flag rationally. The characterization, I thought, was the best part � to me Eliza hadn’t changed at all, though she had changed a lot � it happened so slowly by degrees, it didn’t feel artificial, though at some points it did seem a bit rushed.

But there were some pointed observations that resonate with me even now. Oh, her words haunt me day and night, even before I’d read them, because I live with them from day-to-day, straining to break free. They are my invisible cages that I beat and break my wings against. Even if they sound so ordinary.

“It is man’s nature to be savage; it is woman’s destiny to preserve moral values and good conduct,� Jeremy Sommers pontificated.
“Really, brother. You and I both know that my nature is more savage than yours,� Rose would joke.

“People are beginning to ask questions and Eliza surely imagines a future that does not befit her. Nothing as perilous, you know, as the demon of fantasy embedded in every female heart.�

Technically, there are quite a lot flaws � there is hardly any sub-text to decipher and enjoy, nor a lyrical, captivating narration. And yet, it captivated me, because Eliza mirrored me. I found myself when I stared into her eyes.

Eliza Sommers, I open your pages when I find myself blank. And I’d almost wept at the recognition when Rose told you

“I would happily give half my life to have the freedom a man has, Eliza. But we are women, and that is our cross. All we can do is try to get the best from the little we have.�

But I don’t intend to be a Rose, Eliza. I’d rather be you.