Olivia: A nation's level of violence isn't best measured by its murder rate or its wars. According to Isabel Allende, the single most significant indicator is how it treats its women. Jackson: Whoa. Okay, that’s a heavy way to start. That one idea changes everything you think you know about a country's stability or progress. It reframes the entire conversation. Olivia: It absolutely does. And that powerful, unsettling idea is at the heart of the book we're diving into today: The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende. Jackson: The Isabel Allende, right? The world-famous novelist. I know her for these epic, magical realism books like The House of the Spirits. A non-fiction feminist manifesto feels like a sharp turn. Olivia: Exactly. And what makes it so potent is her background. She's not just a writer; she's the goddaughter of Salvador Allende, the Chilean president. She was a prominent journalist who was forced into exile after the 1973 Pinochet coup. This book isn't theory; it's forged in political fire and personal loss. Jackson: That adds a layer of gravity. This isn't an academic exercise for her. It's lived experience. Olivia: It’s the core of her being. And that fire, that rebellious spirit, it didn't start with the coup. It started when she was just a child, watching her own mother.

Jackson: So what happened? What was the spark? Olivia: The story begins in the early 1940s. Allende’s mother, Panchita, a young, beautiful woman with three small children, is suddenly abandoned by her husband, a diplomat in Peru. She has no money, no voice, no power. She's forced to return to her parents' gloomy, imposing house in Santiago, Chile. Jackson: I can just picture it. The shame, the dependency. In that era, for a woman to be separated was a social death sentence. Olivia: Completely. And young Isabel, just a toddler, is watching all of this. She sees her vibrant mother reduced to a dependent, living at the mercy of her father. She sees the housemaids, also women, treated as second-class citizens. And this observation plants a seed of rage. She says her feminism was born from seeing this injustice, this raw deal that women were handed. Jackson: It’s not an intellectual position, then. It’s a gut reaction. It’s a feeling of ‘this is fundamentally unfair.’ Olivia: Precisely. And this feeling was reinforced by her grandfather, a stern, patriarchal figure who, despite his love for her, embodied the system she was beginning to hate. He had this one story he told her over and over. Jackson: Oh, I'm already nervous about this story. Olivia: You should be. He tells her a fable about a father who stands below a second-floor balcony and tells his young son to jump, promising to catch him. The boy, full of trust, leaps. And at the last second, the father crosses his arms and lets his son crash to the ground, breaking several bones. Jackson: That's horrific! What is the moral of that story? Olivia: The moral, as her grandfather explained it, was: "Trust nobody. Not even your father." Jackson: Wow. That is an incredibly bleak lesson to drill into a child. It's basically a lesson in institutional betrayal. How does that shape a person? Olivia: It shapes them to be fiercely independent. It taught her stoicism and self-reliance, but it also cemented her skepticism of authority, especially male authority. It’s why she later defines feminism not just as a movement for equality, but as a "philosophical stance against male authority." It’s a fundamental questioning of the entire power structure. Jackson: That makes so much more sense now. When you hear "feminism," you often think of specific policy goals, like equal pay. But she's talking about something much deeper. A way of seeing the world. Olivia: Exactly. She has this fantastic quote that sums it up: "It’s not what we have between our legs but what we have between our ears." For her, feminism is an intellectual and spiritual rebellion. It’s a commitment to mending a world that is broken by patriarchy. Jackson: ‘Mending the world.’ That’s such a powerful and ambitious way to frame it. It’s not about getting a bigger piece of the existing, broken pie. It’s about baking a whole new one. Olivia: A whole new one, based on justice and compassion. And that conviction, born from watching her mother and listening to her grandfather's cruel fables, becomes the engine for her entire life.

Jackson: So she has this fire inside her, this rage against the system. But what does a young woman in conservative 1960s Chile do with that? You can't just start a protest on the street corner. Olivia: No, you can't. And for a while, she didn't. She followed the expected path. She got married at twenty, had two children, and found herself deeply, profoundly bored. She describes it as a "burning restlessness." She was a wife and mother, but the rebel inside was suffocating. Jackson: I think a lot of women from that generation, and even today, can relate to that feeling. The sense that there's a bigger life you're meant to live, trapped inside the one you have. Olivia: Absolutely. Her escape hatch came in 1967, with the launch of a new magazine called Paula. It was the first feminist magazine in Chile, and it was designed to shake things up. Her mother’s advice was always, "Everything can be handled elegantly and without noise." But Allende quickly realized, as she put it, "There’s no feminism without noise." Jackson: I love that. ‘No feminism without noise.’ So what kind of noise did she make at Paula? Olivia: She was given a humor column. And instead of writing about traditional women's topics, she created a column called "Civilize Your Troglodyte." Jackson: (Laughs) "Civilize Your Troglodyte"! That's amazing. So she was basically trolling the patriarchy in print? Olivia: She was! She made fun of machismo, of Chilean men's egos, their insecurities, their ridiculous posturing. And the brilliant part was, because it was framed as humor, men read it and loved it. It became wildly popular. She was using satire as a Trojan horse to sneak radical feminist ideas into the mainstream. The magazine tackled taboos no one else would touch: sex, divorce, abortion, discriminatory laws. For the first time, she felt, "I wasn’t a lonely lunatic; millions of women shared my concerns." Jackson: That's a powerful feeling, finding your tribe. But how does that connect to the very real, physical danger she talks about elsewhere in the book? It feels like a huge leap from a funny column to women being afraid for their lives. Olivia: It is a huge leap, and she makes that connection explicit. She tells this devastating story from her school days in Lebanon. A Pakistani friend named Shamila was terrified to go home for vacation, because she knew her father would force her into an arranged marriage with a much older man. When she questioned it, she was beaten and locked up. Allende, a teenager, tried to get her diplomat uncle to grant Shamila asylum. He refused, citing international complications. Shamila was forced into the marriage and disappeared from her life. Jackson: God, that's heartbreaking. The feeling of being completely powerless to help. Olivia: It is. And that story illustrates the stakes. While Allende was fighting with wit and words in Chile, other women were fighting for their very lives against a system that saw them as property. This is where she brings in that famous Margaret Atwood quote. Jackson: Which one is that? Olivia: "Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." Jackson: Wow. That just lands like a punch to the gut. It perfectly captures the asymmetry of the power dynamic. Her column might make men feel foolish, but the system her column was attacking was literally killing women. Olivia: Exactly. She cites the statistics from places like Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, where hundreds of young women were murdered with impunity, or the Congo, known as the "rape capital of the world." For Allende, the humorous column and the fight against femicide are two sides of the same coin. They are both forms of "making noise" against a patriarchal system that devalues women's lives, whether through mockery or murder. The work is one and the same: to be safe, to be valued, to be heard.

Olivia: And that fear, that lifelong battle, you'd think it would wear a person down. You'd think it would lead to bitterness or exhaustion in old age. But for Allende, the final act of rebellion is how she approaches aging. Jackson: How so? Society has a pretty clear script for older women: become quiet, become grandmotherly, become invisible. Olivia: She rips that script to shreds. For her, aging is not about decline; it's about freedom. Freedom from self-doubt, from useless complexes, from the need to please others. And it's a time for passion. Jackson: Okay, I'm intrigued. What does passion look like for a woman in her seventies, according to Allende? Olivia: Well, for one, it looks like falling in love. She tells this incredibly charming story. In 2016, when she's in her mid-seventies, a widowed lawyer from New York named Roger hears her on the radio. He's captivated, and he writes her an email. Not a DM, an old-fashioned email to her office. Jackson: Wait, he just heard her on the radio and wrote her a letter? And it worked? That's like a real-life rom-com for the AARP set. I love it. Olivia: It is! They corresponded for five months, morning and night. He was romantic and persistent. They finally met in New York, and on the way to the airport after their first date, he asked her to marry him. Jackson: No way! That’s bold. What did she say? Olivia: She said, "Marriage is out of the question, but if you are willing to travel frequently to California we can be lovers." Eventually, he sold his house, packed two cars, and drove across the country to be with her. They got married a couple of years later. Jackson: That is a fantastic story. But what's the connection between this personal happiness and her broader feminist mission? Is it just about finding love, or is there something more? Olivia: There's something much more. The point isn't just the romance; it's the refusal to give up on passion, on vitality, on new beginnings. It’s a direct challenge to ageism. But she broadens the definition of passion beyond romance. For her, the ultimate example of a passionate life is a woman named Olga Murray. Jackson: I don't know that name. Who was she? Olivia: Olga was a lawyer who, in her sixties, after her husband died, went trekking in Nepal. She broke her ankle and was carried to a remote village. There, she discovered the practice of kamlari, where families in extreme poverty sold their young daughters, some as young as six, into domestic bondage. Jackson: My god. That's slavery. Olivia: It is. And Olga, a woman in her sixties who could have retired peacefully in California, was so moved and horrified that she dedicated the rest of her life to ending it. She founded the Nepal Youth Foundation. Over the next thirty years, her organization rescued over twelve thousand girls from servitude and ultimately got the practice outlawed in Nepal. Allende holds her up as the pinnacle of a passionate life. Olga is in her nineties and still working. Jackson: That’s incredible. So for Allende, passion isn't just an emotion. It's a purpose. It's the engine that drives you to stay engaged with the world, whether that's through love, or art, or activism. Olivia: That's it exactly. It's the unbridled enthusiasm that keeps you committed and young at heart. It's the ultimate feminist statement in the third act of life: I will not fade away. I will burn brightly until the very end.

Jackson: So when you put it all together... the childhood spark of rebellion, the "making noise" in her career, and this fierce, passionate approach to aging... what's the final takeaway? What is the soul of a woman, according to Isabel Allende? Olivia: I think the core insight is that feminism, for Allende, isn't a single fight or a political identity you put on. It's a life-long posture of defiance and creation. It starts with the personal wound of seeing injustice, it grows into the public act of challenging the system, and it culminates in the personal refusal to be diminished by time. Jackson: It’s a full life cycle of rebellion. Olivia: A full life cycle. And it’s all aimed at that idea we started with: mending a broken world. She believes the patriarchal system we live in is a disaster, not just for women, but for men, for the planet. Her vision of feminism is about creating a more just, compassionate, and sustainable civilization for everyone. It's not about women taking power from men; it's about changing the nature of power itself. Jackson: That feels like a much more hopeful and inclusive vision than how the debate is often framed. It’s not a zero-sum game. Olivia: Not at all. It's a project of collective healing. And she believes the key to that healing lies in one place. Jackson: What's that? Olivia: The connections between women. She quotes the poet Adrienne Rich, and it's a line that gives me chills every time I read it. Jackson: Let's hear it. Olivia: "Connections among women are the most feared and potentially most transforming force on the planet." Jackson: Wow. That is a powerful idea to end on. The most feared, and the most transforming. It makes you think about all the ways women are encouraged to compete with each other, and what could happen if that energy was redirected. What connections have transformed your life? We'd love to hear your stories. Find us on our socials and share. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.