Point of View

In Allende’s novel, Violeta relates her entire life from the first-person perspective, thereby creating a sense of closeness and intimacy between herself and the reader. Through her choice to narrate Violeta’s life directly without the distance of the third-person point of view, Allende draws the reader close to the actions, emotions, and interiority of her protagonist. The reader comes to truly know Violeta, because Allende allows the reader to so intimately enter Violeta’s perspective. Importantly, this also introduces a potential unreliability and subjectivity into the narration. For example, Violeta describes Julián Bravo as an unfaithful, intemperate, deeply flawed man. Julián would likely not describe himself in these terms; the reader receives only Violeta’s perspective on their relationship, therefore raising the possibility that the narrative is, in some sense, incomplete, partial, or inexact. This subjectivity, of course, is a natural...