The Soul of a Woman

by Isabel Allende

  The burden of family planning is on the woman. Many men refuse to use condoms and ejaculate without thinking of the consequences. Women and girls end up being blamed for not having been careful enough. There’s a saying in Spanish: Se dejó preñar, which means that she allowed herself to get pregnant, and implies that she should pay for it. Those who oppose abortion don’t place any responsibility on the man, without whom fertilization is not possible. Neither do they ask about the practical or emotional reasons behind a woman’s choice to end a pregnancy, or what a child would mean for her at that stage of her life.

  I have been lucky; I never went through anything like what Celina endured. I could plan my family—two children—first with the pill and then with an IUD. However, in my late thirties I could no longer tolerate any of the usual contraceptive methods and ended up having a tubal ligation. I thought that decision was my only option but I resented it for a long time afterward, partly because the surgery was complicated and I developed a serious infection, and partly because I felt mutilated. Why did I have to go through that? Why didn’t my husband get a vasectomy instead? It’s a much simpler procedure. Well, because despite my feminism, I didn’t demand it.

  Both my granddaughters have decided that they are not going to have children because it’s too much work and the planet is overpopulated. On the one hand it saddens me a little that they will miss out on that experience, which was wonderful for me, but on the other hand I am happy that these young women have that option. I am afraid, however, that our family will be extinguished unless my only grandson steps up and finds a willing partner.

  * * *

  Women were able to control their fertility for centuries. They had knowledge of the menstrual cycle and of herbs and abortive methods, but that knowledge was brutally rooted out. As a consequence of the devaluation of women, men arrogated for themselves dominion over the female body.

  Who makes decisions about a woman’s body and the number of children she can have? Men in politics, religion, and law who don’t experience pregnancy, childbirth, or motherhood. Unless laws, religion, and culture place the same responsibility for a pregnancy on the father as the mother, men should not be allowed to have an opinion in this matter. It’s none of their business. This is a personal decision for each woman. Control over one’s fertility is a human right.

  In Nazi Germany abortion was punished with prison for the woman, and death for the practitioner. Women had to produce children for the nation. The mothers of eight or more children were awarded a gold medal. In several Latin American countries, laws about this are so draconian that a miscarriage is immediately deemed suspicious and the woman may be accused of having induced it and end up in prison for years. In Chile in 2013, a girl called Belen, eleven years old, was raped by her stepfather and got pregnant. She was not allowed to have an abortion despite the campaigns of several civil organizations and an international scandal.

  Abortion should be decriminalized; that is, it should not be punished. That’s different from legalizing it, because the laws are imposed by the patriarchy and power stays in the hands of judges, the police, politicians, and other male institutions. As an aside, this is the same reason sex workers aren’t asking for prostitution to be legalized, but rather for it to be decriminalized.

  Steve King, a congressman from the United States, proposed abolishing the right to abortion even in the case of rape or incest. “What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that? Considering all the wars and all the rape and pillage that’s taken place…I know that I can’t certify that I’m not a part of a product of that.” In summary, a defense of rape and incest as natural and normal. Eighty-four congressmen from the Republican Party signed this proposal.

  A former American congressman, Todd Akin, said that rape rarely resulted in a pregnancy. “If it’s legitimate rape [?], the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.” So, according to him, the uterus magically knows when it’s “legitimate rape” versus other forms of sex. This genius was a member of the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

  In the United States, there are thirty-two thousand reported cases of pregnancy resulting from rape annually.

  * * *

  Women need to have control over their lives as much as they need to control their fertility, but none of that is possible if they suffer domestic violence and their fate is in the hands of an abuser.

  Years ago, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I worked as a journalist in Chile, I reported more than once on very poor neighborhoods. Families there lived in shacks made of cardboard and wooden planks, the men were jobless, often alcoholic, and the women were burdened with many children and were victims of poverty, abuse, and exploitation. A common scenario would be that a man would come home drunk or simply frustrated and beat up his wife or children. The police didn’t intervene, partly due to indifference and because they sometimes did the same in their homes, and partly because supposedly they could not enter the dwelling without a warrant. Faced with this reality, when women neighbors heard a wife or kids screaming they would break in, armed with pots and pans, and give the aggressor what he deserved. Their method was quick and efficient.

  I am ashamed to admit that Chile was then, and continues to be, one of the countries with the highest rates of domestic violence in the world. It’s possible that more cases are reported than in other places, and that the statistics are more accurate. It happens in every social stratum, but in the upper classes it’s kept hidden. Sometimes there’s no physical abuse but there is psychological mistreatment, and emotional torture can be just as harmful.

  One in three women suffer some kind of physical or sexual abuse in their lives regardless of their appearance or their age. This brings to mind a song composed by four young Chilean women in 2019, which went viral globally. It became a feminist hymn and has been translated into many languages and played in streets and other public venues by thousands and thousands of blindfolded women. The song summarizes in a few lines what every woman experiences or fears.

  And the fault wasn’t mine,

  Not where I went or how I was dressed.

  The rapist was you.

  The rapist was you.

  —“A Rapist in Your Path” by Las Tesis

  The Chilean police, well known for their aggressive methods, have filed a lawsuit against Las Tesis for “threats to the institution, attacks on authority, and inciting hatred and violence.”

  * * *

  Violence against women has been so common for millennia that we all avoid risky situations automatically. That limits us very much. What most men do without a second thought, like walking at night on the street, going into a bar, or hitchhiking, turns on an alarm in us. Is it worth the risk?

  Domestic violence is so prevalent that Chile’s first female president, Michelle Bachelet (who served from 2006 to 2010, and again from 2014 to 2018), prioritized in her administration the battle against violence in the family. She implemented education, training, information, shelters, and protective laws. She also provided free and easy access to contraception, but she couldn’t get Congress to decriminalize abortion.

  The life of this feminist hero is like a novel. She studied medicine as a way to help people in need, she said in an interview, and specialized in pediatrics. Her father, General Alberto Bachelet, was killed by the military dictatorship. He was arrested by his comrades in arms because he refused to join them in the uprising against the democratic government; he subsequently died of a heart attack while being tortured.

  Michelle and her mother were also arrested by the secret police and tortured in the infamous Villa Grimaldi, which is now a museum of the atrocities committed during those years. When Michelle was rescued, she went into exile in Australia, and
later to East Germany. Years later, she returned to Chile, where she was able to finish her medical training and then worked in different positions until the reinstatement of democracy in 1990, when she started her political career.

  As minister of health she authorized the distribution of the morning-after pill, to avoid pregnancy immediately after sex, to women and girls over fourteen years old. In Chile, where the Catholic Church and the right-wing parties are very powerful, this measure created tremendous opposition but also won her respect and popularity.

  In 2017 the Chilean Congress approved abortion in three instances: threat to the life of the mother, inviability of the fetus outside the womb, and rape. In cases of rape, it had to be done within the first twelve weeks of gestation, or by fourteen weeks if the girl was fourteen or younger. The restrictions even in these cases, however, are such that the law is almost a mockery destined to placate the majority of women who demand it. During the mass demonstrations that this law generated, many women marched topless to emphasize that they own their own bodies.

  In 2002 Michelle was appointed minister of national defense, making her the first woman to hold that position in Latin America and one of the few in the world. She had the Herculean task of trying to reconcile the military and the victims of the dictatorship, and to obtain from the armed forces the promise that they would never again overturn democracy.

  I can’t even imagine how this woman could overcome the trauma of the past and deal with the institution that imposed a regime of terror for seventeen years upon her country, assassinated her father, tortured her and her mother, and forced her into exile. One of her torturers lived in her same building and they would occasionally meet in the elevator.

  When asked about the need for national reconciliation Michelle replied that it was a personal decision. No one can demand forgiveness of the victims of repression. The country has to go forward into the future with the heavy burden of the past.

  I will walk the streets again

  Of what once was bloody Santiago

  And in a beautiful liberated square

  Will pause to weep for those who are absent

  —“I Will Walk the Streets Again” by Pablo Milanés

  * * *

  The caliph of Baghdad would have liked to know that women want love above all. We have something weird in our brains, a sort of tumor that propels us toward love. We can’t live without it. Out of love we put up with children and men. Our self-denial is a form of servitude. Have you noticed that individualism and selfishness are considered positive traits in men and defects in women? We tend to postpone fulfilling our needs in favor of our children, our partners, our parents, and almost everyone else. We submit and make sacrifices for love—that seems to us the height of nobility. The more we suffer for love, the nobler we are, as is clearly expressed in soap operas. Culture exalts love as the most sublime sentiment, and we fall willingly into that delicious trap due to the tumor in our brains. I include myself: My tumor is one of the most malign.

  I will not talk about maternal love because it is untouchable and for any joke I dare make about it I will have to pay a high price. Once I told my son, Nicolás, that instead of bringing children into the world he could get a dog, and he has never forgiven me. He married at twenty-two and had three children in five years. His maternal instinct is overdeveloped. As for me, my grandchildren are okay, but I also love dogs.

  I can’t criticize mothers’ obsessive love because that’s probably the only reason why species have survived, from bats to technocrats. Nor will I refer to the love of nature, gods, goddesses, or other similar concepts because this is not even close to a scholarly lecture, it’s just an informal chat.

  Let’s talk instead about romantic love, that collective illusion that has become yet another product of consumerism. The romance industry competes with narco trafficking in creating addiction. I suppose romance has a different meaning for each woman. Not all are obsessed with a movie actor, like myself, and there must be those who fall in love with a frog, like the princess in the fairy tale. In my case the physical attributes of the chosen one are irrelevant so long as he smells good, has his own teeth, and doesn’t smoke. However, I have other requirements that are rarely found together in real life: tenderness, a sense of humor, the patience to put up with me, and other qualities that I can’t remember right now. Fortunately, my current beloved has them in abundance.

  * * *

  It’s time to talk about Roger, as promised.

  The unforgettable lessons of my grandfather’s rigorous school were very useful. They forged my character and helped me overcome moments of great adversity, but they had a negative influence on my love relationships. I don’t surrender; I am self-sufficient and very independent; it’s very easy for me to give and very difficult to receive. I don’t accept favors unless I can give back; I hate to get presents and don’t allow anybody to celebrate my birthday. One of my greatest challenges was to accept my vulnerability, but now it’s much easier thanks to a new love, which hopefully will be the last one.

  One day in May 2016, a widowed lawyer from New York named Roger heard me on the radio while he was driving from Manhattan to Boston. He had read a couple of my books, and something that I said must have captured his attention because he wrote to my office. I answered, and he kept on writing every morning and every evening for five months. I usually answer only the first message from a reader because it would be impossible to have a correspondence with the hundreds of people who write to me, but the New York widower’s tenacity impressed me. We kept in touch.

  My assistant at the time, Chandra, who is addicted to detective TV series and has the nose of a bloodhound, decided to find out as much as possible about the mysterious widower. He could have been a psychopath; one never knows. You wouldn’t believe how much information is available to anyone who wants to dig into someone’s private life. Suffice it to say that Chandra handed me a large file, which included even the man’s license plate number and the names of his five grandchildren. His wife had died a few years before; he lived alone in a large house in Scarsdale, New York; he took the train to Manhattan daily; his office was on Park Avenue; etc. “He seems legit, but we can’t trust anybody; he could be an accomplice of Brenda’s architect,” Chandra warned me.

  In October I traveled to New York to a conference and Roger and I finally met. I ascertained that he was exactly the guy I had seen in his emails and whom Chandra had investigated: transparent. I liked him but it wasn’t the lightning bolt of sudden passion, as had happened with Willie when I was forty-five. This confirms what I said before about passion: Hormones matter a lot. Roger invited me to dinner, and a half hour into the meal I asked him point-blank what his intentions were. “I am seventy-four and I don’t have time to waste,” I explained. He choked on his ravioli but did not try to run, as I would have done if he had ambushed me that way.

  We were together for three days and then I had to return home. That time was enough for Roger to decide that now that he had found me, he was not going to let me go. He asked me to marry him on the way to the airport. I answered as any respectable mature lady would: “Marriage is out of the question, but if you are willing to travel frequently to California we can be lovers. What do you think?” Poor man…what could he answer? Yes, of course.

  That’s what we did for several months until the effort of meeting for just a weekend after a whole day of traveling became too much. Roger sold his old house, which was filled with furniture, objects, and memories; he gave away everything it contained and moved to California with two bikes and his clothes, which I promptly replaced because they were dated. “I have nothing left. If this doesn’t work, I will be homeless under a bridge,” he said, worried.

  * * *

  For a year and seven months we tested our relationship, living together in my dollhouse with two dogs. We both had to compromise. I have to tole
rate his mess and he my bossy temperament, my extreme punctuality, and my writing obsession, which doesn’t leave me much free time for other endeavors. We learned the delicate dance of couples who get along and can move on the dance floor without stepping on each other’s toes. Once we were sure that we could stand each other, we got married, because he is a traditional sort of guy and the idea of living in sin worried him. It was an intimate wedding, held in the company of our children and grandchildren only. They are all delighted by our marriage because it means that they will not have to take care of us just yet; Roger and I will take care of each other for as long as we can.

  My mother would also be happy for us. A few days before she died, she told me to marry Roger because she didn’t want me to be old and alone. I explained that I didn’t feel old or alone. “If I have a perfect lover waiting for me in California, why would I want an imperfect husband?” I argued. “Lovers don’t last; a husband is a captive prey,” she replied.

  * * *

  I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I depend on this lover/husband for several tasks that before I could perform easily, like filling the gas tank of the car and changing lightbulbs. Roger was born and raised in the Bronx, the product of Polish parents; he has heavy peasant hands and a mellow character. He helps me deal with this world’s inconveniences without making me feel like a moron. I am glad I listened to my mother when she said I should marry him. He is a good captive prey; hopefully he won’t change.