Tree by Maria Bombal Is

¶ … Tree by Maria Bombal is a story about an unhappy woman with a distorted self-image. She is not really stupid, but she believes she is because her father said she was when she was young. Her father was too tired out from raising her sisters to be a parent to her. He excused himself from meeting her needs by telling everyone that she was stupid and retarded. Because he did not encourage her to accomplish anything, she did not try to learn.

She developed the habit of not thinking about things, not expressing her feelings, and not forming answers to problems in her life. For example, her sisters all found husbands but "no one proposed to her" (p. 523). Instead of looking for a husband, she marries the only one around who accepts her as she is, a man like her father who is not really capable of loving her and meeting her needs.

He is too old to be passionate, which naturally she wants: "Why become excited uselessly! Luis loved her with tenderness and moderation: if some time he should come to hate her, he would hate her justly and prudently" (p. 527). The Tree is a symbol of herself -- the part of herself that hides her from her feelings and denies them. The dressing room is like a space in her mind where she can go to hide.

When she is upset, the tree calls her, and she goes to it for shelter instead of dealing with her feelings: "She approached the window, rested her forehead against the icy glass. There was the rubber tree calmly receiving the rain that struck it, softly and steadily" (p. 517). Psychologically, the tree is crying for her. Rain falling on it shows her grief.

Running to the tree represents escaping to that part of herself where she can be comforted and she can pretend everything is all right: "How that huge rubber tree chattered! All the birds of the neighborhood came to take shelter in it" (p. 524). When Brigida tells Luis, "You don't have a heart, you don't have a heart" (p. 523), she's not just talking about his physical heart which she cannot hear beating when she puts her head on his chest. He doesn't love her enough.

He isn't really "with her." He doesn't try to imagine how she feels. He is not willing to share who he really is with her. When she questions him about his past, about his childhood, and about his mother, he will not answer her. He goes to sleep.

When she asks him why he married her and he replies, "Because you have the eyes of a frightened little doe," and kisses her, his teasing makes her happy because the answer implies in a small way that she is a person, that he has recognized something about her and who she is inside. But this is the only time in the story when he seems to see her as a person and not just a possession.

By retreating into an illusion (the illusion that she does not need sex, passionate love, intimacy, or a real life) she is able to keep from feeling the pain of her unmet needs: "...like a plant shut up and thirsty that stretches out its branches in search of a more favorable climate" (p. 524). Thirst that is not satisfied is the worst unmet need a human being can experience. Thirst that persists beyond a certain point ends in death. That is how the tree ends.

It is cut down, and its death signals the end of Brigida's marriage. The tree kept the harsh reality away. Without the tree (and the illusion) there is no way she stay married to Luis. The tree represented a mental place of refuge which allowed her to hide her feelings from herself. Once the tree is gone, she has to face the truth and leave Luis. Music at the concert she attends acts as a bridge to connect her to her memories and her feelings.

Mozart makes a bridge to her childhood, her fairy tale dreams of romance, and her father's treatment of her.

Beethoven puts her in touch with her sexuality in a passage that sounds like a description of increasing sexual pleasure: And now Beethoven's music begins to stir up the warm waves...Brigida walks across the beach toward the sea now recoiled in the distance, shimmering and calm, but then, the sea swells, slowly grows, comes to meet her, envelops her, and with gentle waves, gradually pushes her, pushes her from behind until it makes her rest her cheek upon the body of the man" (p. 523).

Later in the story "melancholy" Chopin reaches her sadness and disappointment in her husband, her loneliness, and despair: "Chopin and the rain that slips through the leaves of the rubber tree with the noise of a hidden waterfall that seems to drench even the roses on the cretonnes, become intermingled in her agitated nostalgia" (p. 526). The music reaches her in a way that words cannot. There are several ways music can do this. The tone and color of the music can match the tone and color of a particular emotion.

Feelings of being in love, for example, or a remembrance of pain or some intense emotion that lies hidden may "match" the music, like notes in a chord match and go together, and then the feelings surface. it's a lot like "smell" when we smell something that is associated with a memory. For example, when I smell a perfume that my mother wore when I was little, it immediately takes me back to.