Epifania's Anguish as Seen in "A House Divided"

“‘From now on,’ Epifania determined, ‘it is the simple life for us…’” What she desired however was “of being, at long last, at the heart of the web, the top of the heap, of lounging dragonwise upon a pile of gold and letting loose, when it pleased her, a burst of cleansing, terrorizing flame”. This defines for Epifania, the notion of home and of her own personal existence.

Even though the previously stated is revealed to the reader not as an introduction of Epifania, it is fairly justified to call it one. The marriage of Epifania, who came from a “much-reduced trader family”, to Francisco Da Gama, who was a very rich man, “went against all reason… because a man so rich ought to have been decently revolted by the empty bank accounts, costume jewelry and cheap tailoring…” However, her marriage to Francisco not only, possibly, starts off for her the particular notion of home previously mentioned, but it also gets her notoriously close to achieving it permanently.

But things start to go South for her when Francisco brings in the Frenchman and redecorates the house, much to her horror, and later when Francisco starts his ideological struggles. However, after Francisco’s fall from grace she, the ultimate opportunist, swoops in and tries to take over. After his death she instantly tries to get as close as she can to her home as possible. She does away with the re-decorations that the Frenchman had brought about. But she dramatically slides back down when in Francisco’s will she is not given anything. With Isabelle, a rebel to her tyranny, she turns to Aries and Carmen to provide her with a grandson through which she could rule. Failure for that to happen leads her to invite her relatives to take over. That fails horribly too. The sons go to jail and Belle takes over the Empire, and physically divides the house hence draining any hope for Epifania to be the center of the web. In fact what Epifania dreamt of as her home is adopted by Belle as a way of life in front of her very own eyes and this proves to be for Epifania, a great source of distress.

The constant images of Epifania as a wretch in ruins that are portrayed when, for example she finds out that she had been given nothing in Francisco’s will and when, for example, she is praying when both of her sons are in jail and Isabelle has taken over the Empire, effectively forward her existence as exilic. Her anguish at not getting that “magnificence” for which she felt she was destined, is therefore put into greater perspective.