Feminism

Feminism is Allende’s overarching theme insofar as it is her life’s pursuit. Looking back, as early as kindergarten, even before she knew the word, she felt that she was a feminist. She would stand up against convention, speak her mind, and defy her male relatives. It is precisely because Allende grew up in a family where patriarchs like Grandpa Agustín and Uncle Ramón reigned that she wanted to rebel. In a country where men had all the power, she developed a keen sense of the double standards by which they ruled society. She observed those double standards in her mother’s predicament as a single mother, the housemaids’ mistreatment, and in her travels to other nations where women were also treated as second-class citizens or property.

Allende simply could not, would not adhere to the norm that girls and women were born to serve...