The Soul of a Woman

Chilean-born author Isabel Allende opens this memoir-essay hybrid by declaring she was a feminist "in kindergarten," born in 1942, long before anyone in her family knew the term. She traces this awareness to the situation of her mother, Panchita, whose husband abandoned her in Peru with three small children, forcing her to return to her parents' home in Santiago, Chile. In that gloomy house, Allende grew up watching her mother endure subordination without money, job training, or freedom, in a country that did not legalize divorce until 2004. Panchita's powerlessness, and that of the household maids, planted in Allende a visceral anger against machismo, the culture of male dominance, that she could only fully articulate decades later in therapy.

Over time, Allende reconsidered her mother's story, recognizing that Panchita was not purely a victim. When Allende was about 11, Panchita paired up with a diplomat Allende always called Uncle Ramón, a cheerful, bossy man who denied his own machismo. Allende resisted him through adolescence but eventually came to see him as her best friend. Her biological father, meanwhile, consented to the marriage annulment on the condition that he never care for his children and never saw them again. Allende reflects that his disappearance scarred her ability to trust men and challenges the claim that Chile is a matriarchy, arguing that men have always controlled political and economic power.

Allende defines her central terms. She describes patriarchy as a system granting dominion and privileges to the male gender, enforced through aggression and encompassing misogyny, racism, homophobia, and classism. Feminism, she argues, is not anatomy but a philosophical posture: a commitment to justice and the emancipation of women, the LGBTQIA+ community (encompassing sexual and gender minorities), and all who are oppressed. In her youth she fought for equality within the existing system, but in maturity she came to see the system itself as destructive. She compares patriarchy to stone and feminism to the ocean: fluid, powerful, and never quiet.

Her grandfather Agustín shaped her self-reliance. A stoic patriarch who had worked since age 14, he taught Allende to trust nobody and never depend on others. At 16, after Uncle Ramón sent the children back to Chile from Lebanon during a 1958 political crisis, Allende returned to her grandfather's house and spent her adolescence in contained fury, finding solace in reading and daily letters to her mother, who had moved to Turkey. While other girls worried about appearance and boys, Allende preached socialism and feminism, outraged by Chile's class inequality. She digresses to describe the October 2019 social explosion, when millions of Chileans protested income inequality rooted in the neoliberal model imposed by General Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship.

Panchita warned that feminist ideas would invite male aggression and condemn her daughter to spinsterhood. At 15, Allende left the Catholic Church because of its inherent machismo. She recounts the story of Shamila, a Pakistani classmate in Lebanon who was beaten and forced into marriage at 14; Allende sought Uncle Ramón's help, but he refused to risk an international incident. Her grandfather, though antiquated, was at least willing to listen, and Allende managed to get him to read Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex.

Allende married Miguel, an engineering student, at 20 and had two children, Paula and Nicolás, but struggled with restlessness despite loving her family. Everything changed in 1967 when she began working at Paula, a newly launched feminist magazine edited by Delia Vergara. The small team of young women challenged Chilean taboos on sex, domestic violence, contraception, and abortion. Allende adopted humor as a strategy, creating the popular column "Civilize Your Troglodyte," which mocked machismo and was ironically popular among men. The magazine transformed her childhood anger into purposeful action and showed her that millions of women shared her concerns.

Allende devotes attention to beauty, vanity, and the female body, arguing that the market and media cultivate women's low self-esteem to sell products and maintain control. Only age or tragedy, she contends, can free women from objectification; for her, it was the death of her daughter Paula when Allende was 50. She describes writing Aphrodite (1998), a book about aphrodisiacs, and reflects that eroticism now interests her less than kindness. She recounts leaving her first husband in 1976 to follow a musician to Spain, a mistake she deeply regretted, and later moving to California in 1987 for Willie, a lawyer she pressured into marriage for visa purposes.

Her literary career receives extended reflection. She attributes her success to luck and discipline rather than ambition, which she once considered a male attribute. The House of the Spirits (1982) appeared after the Latin American literary boom, a mid-20th-century movement dominated by male authors that systematically ignored women writers; the novel's success revealed that most readers were women, opening the market for female authors. She pays tribute to Carmen Balcells, the famous Barcelona literary agent who championed the boom's major writers and discovered Allende's first novel. Allende describes Chilean chaqueteo, the cultural practice of pulling down anyone who rises too high, noting the effect is doubled for women.

On aging, Allende profiles Olga Murray, a woman who, while trekking in Nepal in her sixties, witnessed agents buying young girls from their fathers. The girls were sold as kamlaris, a form of bonded labor. Olga returned to California, created the Nepal Youth Foundation, saved approximately 15,000 girls, and persuaded the Nepalese government to outlaw the practice. Allende holds Olga up as her model for purposeful aging.

The book's argumentative core addresses what women want. Allende offers her answer: Women want safety, to be valued, peace, their own resources, connection, control over their bodies, and above all, love. She presents extensive evidence of global violence against women, from daily femicides in Mexico to systematic wartime rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She declares war the maximum manifestation of machismo and highlights playwright Eve Ensler's City of Joy in Congo, a refuge where female survivors of war and torture recover their voices. Allende argues that investing in women is among the most efficient paths to social progress, noting that mothers in less developed regions typically spend their income on family needs.

Allende recounts traveling to India in 1995 with Willie after Paula's death. On a road in Rajasthan, a woman handed her a newborn girl wrapped in rags and refused to take the baby back; the driver explained that no one wants a girl. The encounter inspired Allende to create a foundation investing in the power of vulnerable women and girls, continuing the values of justice and empowerment that Paula had embodied during her short life.

She discusses reproductive rights through the story of Celina, a teenage student she helped obtain a clandestine abortion in Chile when Allende herself was 18. The dangerous procedure, performed by a former nurse on a dining table, made Allende inflexible in defending reproductive rights. She profiles Chile's first female president, Michelle Bachelet (serving 2006–2010 and 2014–2018), whose father, General Alberto Bachelet, died after being tortured by the military dictatorship. Michelle was herself detained and tortured at Villa Grimaldi, a dictatorship-era detention and torture center, before going into exile. As president, she prioritized combating domestic violence and expanded access to contraception.

Allende recalls her daughter Paula suggesting, around age 20, that feminism was dated and unsexy. They argued fiercely, with Allende insisting feminism is an evolving revolution whose benefits had not yet reached most women. Once Paula entered the workforce, she enthusiastically embraced feminist ideas. Paula died young, and Allende still thinks of her every morning and night.

The book closes with Allende writing in March 2020 during the coronavirus quarantine with Roger, her third husband. She met the widowed New York lawyer in 2016 after he heard her on the radio and wrote persistently for five months; they married after living together for over a year. Reflecting on the pandemic, Allende notes that pollution has diminished and people have realized what truly matters is love. She envisions a world of mutual respect, inclusivity, and compassion, calling it not a fantasy but a project achievable by "good witches" working together.