Allende’s memoir shows feminism has room for joy
Isabel Allende was in her 20s, working at a women’s magazine in Chile, when the second wave of feminism hit. Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” and Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” were among the most significant books in that era (roughly from the 1960s to the 1980s) that galvanized women to redefine their role in society and the struggle against gender inequities.
For Allende, the most important book, however, was “The Female Eunuch” by Germaine Greer. “I saw myself in her book,” she told me recently, adding that she was drawn to Greer’s “intelligence and humor.” Humor, she explained, “is important because it opens up people who wouldn’t normally listen.” As a secondwaver who found precious little humor in the feminist messages that I embraced, it delights me to hear her endorse its value.
My recent conversation with Allende took place after I read her new memoir, “The Soul of a Woman,” (available March 2), which describes how she came to and lives her own personal brand of feminism. And let me tell you, she’s very funny.
On her own sexuality at the age of 78, from the book: “I can still be sexy in private, given certain strategies, of course. In candlelight I might be able to fool a distracted guy who has had three glasses of wine, is not wearing his glasses, and is not intimidated by a woman who takes the initiative.”
“Women’s emancipation is not incompatible with femininity,” asserts Allende. And sensuality is still very much a part of her life,
about which she wrote at length in “Aphrodite,” her 1998 “novel of the senses.”
Last year, she married her third husband, Roger, and definitely took the initiative after their first lunch together, following an online relationship. “After the salad, I asked him what his intentions were. As we age, we have no time to waste.”
Allende says she is “absolutely not” wearing the “pandemic costume” of ratty sweats and stained Tshirts. “I wake up every day and put on full makeup and heels and stay home with Roger and the dogs,” she said. Perfume? Of course.
Unexpectedly, this very romantic woman says it’s “challenging” creating romantic heroes in her writing: “You have to believe in the genre. … I’ve never found a model of the perfect romantic lover in real life.”
She tried to create such a character in her 1987 novel “Eva Luna,” but, “by page 120, I hated the guy and had to kill him off.” She admitted, however, bingeing on “Bridgerton,” Shonda Rimes’ Regencyera England historical drama, which Roger refuses to watch.
It was Allende’s mother who inspired her rebellion against male authority. Her husband, Allende’s father, abandoned her with two toddlers, and she was forced to return to her parents’ home in Chile, penniless and without any agency.
She and her mother remained close throughout her mother’s life, writing each other every day. She revealed she has more than 24,000 of their letters in storage.
“Might you publish them some day?” I asked.
“Never,” she replied. “They’re too mean and gossipy.”
“The Soul of a Woman” is not all about femininity and sexuality. It also addresses some of the most serious battles women worldwide face in a patriarchal society, including rape, racism, lack of educational opportunity, domestic violence and economic inequality. Her Isabel Allende Foundation, which honors her late daughter, Paula, invests in the power of women and girls to secure reproductive rights, economic independence and freedom from violence.
When I asked Allende if she has any message for readers regarding the present and future of the feminist movement, she replied: “Tell them this is a long haul. We have to do it joyfully and dance and sing and eat and drink and celebrate.”
“Women’s emancipation is not incompatible with femininity.” Isabel Allende
Barbara Lane can’t remember a time when she didn’t have her nose in a book. Her column appears every other Tuesday in Datebook. Email: barbara.lane@sfchronicle.com.