Love and Passion
While most of the characters of The House of the Spirits experience passionate love, they often discover that passion is not enough to sustain a relationship. Esteban has a deep passion for his wife Clara, but his love is possessive: "he wanted far more than her body; he wanted control over that undefined and luminous material that lay within her." His desire to control what he loves fuels his anger, leading him to punish those he loves when they do not comply with his expectations. Férula's love for Clara similarly becomes a "jealous passion that resembled that of a demanding husband more than it did that of a sister-in-law," and leads to her banishment from the house. But unpossessive love is not complete, either, unless it is tempered with common sense. Amanda, for instance, knows that Nicolás is too immature to make a good husband and refuses to turn their "free love" relationship into a marriage. Blanca is unable to run away with Pedro Tercero because she fears her "grandiose love" will not survive the commonplace nature of everyday life together. Instead, she "fed [her love] with fantasies, idealized it, savagely defended it, stripped it of prosaic truth, and turned it into the kind of love one found in novels." The most successful loves portrayed in the novel are unconditional, involving both giving and receiving. Alba and Miguel love each other without restrictions or conditions, which allows their love to survive his periods of concealment, as well as her torture and imprisonment. This healthy attitude toward love is also expressed in parent-child relationships. Nívea del Valle, for instance, understands that the best way to deal with Clara's unusual abilities is to "love her unconditionally and accept her as she was." Blanca and Alba learn that the impaired children to whom they teach ceramics "worked much better when they felt loved, and that the only way to communicate with them was through affection." This is a lesson that Esteban finally learns, when at last he manages to love his granddaughter Alba without the anger that has crippled the rest of his relationships.

Sex Roles
The struggle of women to achieve equality and self-determination forms an important part of the novel, and is reflected in the clashes of the various female characters against Esteban Trueba. Although Esteban believes that a woman's duty is "motherhood and the home," he recognizes that this role is a difficult one: "I would not have liked to be a woman," he says to Férula when she expresses her bitterness at having to stay with their infirm mother. Interestingly enough, Esteban has nothing but respect for the most unconventional woman he knows, Tránsito Soto, whose ambition has made her into a successful businesswoman. Nevertheless, he treats women like property, raping peasant women without guilt, paying female workers less than men, and expecting his female relatives to obey his orders without question. He frowns on Nívea del Valle, who fights for the right to vote, and forbids Clara to teach the hacienda's workers about women's rights. Clara continually defies her husband's expectations, however, and essentially lives her life as she wants to, using his house to hold spiritualist sessions and minister to the poor. Blanca similarly defies her father by taking Pedro Tercero for her lover, even though she gives in to Esteban by marrying Jean de Satigny. By the time his granddaughter grows up, Esteban "had finally come to accept...that not all women were complete idiots," and agrees that Alba "could enter one of the professions and make her living like a man." The struggle for equality has made women strong, however, as Alba discovers after she is rescued from the empty lot where the political police have dumped her. The woman who takes her in is "one of the stoical, practical women of our country," and the risks she takes to help a stranger make Alba realize that "the days of Colonel García and all those like him are numbered, because they have not been able to destroy the spirit of these women."

Justice and Injustice
Just as Esteban believes that women have their place in life, he also feels strongly about the role of the "lower classes." He believes his tenants "are like children, they can't handle responsibility," and is leery of letting them learn more than basic reading and math skills "for fear they would fill their minds with ideas unsuited to their station and condition." He does not recognize the injustice that his patrón system perpetuates and is unable to see in the intelligent Pedro Segundo "any virtues beyond those that marked him as a good peon." The clear-seeing Clara, however, recognizes the injustices created by class differences. As a young girl she sees the "absurdity" in her upper-class mother preaching about oppression and inequality to "hardworking women in denim aprons, their hands red with chilblains." When she takes Blanca with her to visit the poor, she explains that "this is to assuage our conscience...But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice." The election of the Socialist Candidate does little to ease class inequities, however, as the upper-class Conservatives conspire to undermine the government by arranging food shortages. After the coup, food returns to stores but the poor cannot afford it, and Alba sees a return to "the old days when her Grandmother Clara went to the Misericordia District to replace justice with charity." But, as the upper class discovers, the coup does not mean a return to the old class order; instead, the military forms a new class: they were "a breed apart, brothers who spoke a different dialect from civilians." Esteban García is a member of this new ruling class, and it is his perverted desire for "justice"— fed by his grandmother Pancha' s tales of his parentage—that leads him to torture Alba. She comes to understand that the Colonel's purpose was not to gain information about Miguel, "but to avenge himself for injuries that had been inflicted on him from birth."

Science and Technology
The twentieth century is one of "light, science, and technology," as Severo del Valle believes. Esteban Trueba is similarly enchanted with scientific developments, and attempts to improve life at Tres Marías through technology. Science is not perfect, however, as it can do nothing to cure Clara's silence or discover why Esteban is shrinking. Similarly, many scientific improvements to the hacienda end up useless, such as the kerosene stove that becomes a henhouse because no one can learn how to use it. Old Pedro García often demonstrates the limits of science, as he dispels the hacienda's ant plague just by talking to the insects, and sets Esteban's broken bones by touch so well that "the doctors who examined Trueba afterward could not believe such a thing was possible." Science and magic are not so different from each other, however. If sufficiently advanced, science becomes a kind of magic, as one cannot understand how it works and must take it on faith. Thus Father Restrepo calls the del Valle car "satanic," while the peasants of Tres Marías believe the news reports on the radio are "fairy tales, which did nothing to alter the narrowness of their existence." Clara recognizes this connection between science and magic: "If you can't understand how the telephone works," she tells Nicolás during his fruitless attempts to develop psychic powers, "how do you expect to understand miracles?"

Language and Meaning
Words and stories have a special significance in The House of the Spirits. Old Pedro García is respected and loved for his storytelling ability, and Nívea tells young Clara wild stories about their family in the hope that she will ask questions and thus regain her speech. Férula is such a gifted storyteller that "her listener felt as if he were there," and Pedro Tercero's story-songs create more converts than all the pamphlets he distributes. Language has power, and Clara believes that "by giving problems a name they tended to manifest themselves...; whereas if they remained in the limbo of unspoken words, they could disappear by themselves." Names have importance as well, as the names of Clara, Blanca, and Alba form "a chain of luminous words" which connect them to each other. Clara is convinced that Spanish and Esperanto are the only languages of interest to beings from other dimensions, while Esteban believes that English is superior to Spanish in describing the world of science and technology.
It is the written word, however, that has the most significance in the novel—after all, the family's story could not have been retold without Clara's notebooks, which "bore witness to life." Uncle Marcos's books of travel and fairy tales "inhabit the dreams of his descendants," giving Clara, Blanca, and Alba a shared mythology. The writing in Clara's notebooks reflects her state of mind, and her correspondence with Blanca "salvaged events from the mist of improbable facts." Jaime constructs a room with books, and Nicolás fills fifteen hundred pages with a treatise on spirituality. Even the government recognizes the might of the written word: "With the stroke of a pen the military changed world history, erasing every incident, ideology, and historical figure of which they disapproved." When the political police come for Alba, the culmination of their destruction comes when they set "an infamous pyre" that was fed with Jaime's collection, Uncle Marcos's books, Nicolás's treatise, and "even Trueba's opera scores." Thus, it is fitting that Alba battles this violence through writing, as both Clara's ghost and Ana Díaz suggest to her. Using Clara's notebooks, Blanca's letters, and other family documents, Alba can come to understand and survive through writing: "I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events...I want to think that my task is life and that my mission is not to prolong hatred but simply to fill these pages."

The novel follows three generations of Trueba women—Clara, Blanca, and Alba— as they struggle to establish their independence from Esteban Trueba, the domineering family patriarch. The political backdrop to this family story is the growing conflict between political forces of left and right, culminating in a military coup that leads to a stifling dictatorship. While the country is never specifically named as Chile, its political history reflects that of the author's homeland. In 1973, military forces deposed the legally elected administration of President Salvador Allende, Isabel's uncle. "I think I have divided my life [into] before that day and after that day," Allende told Publishers Weekly interviewer Amanda Smith. "In that moment, I realized that everything was possible—that violence was a dimension that was always around you." Because of this realization, The House of the Spirits has a political element that is more explicit than many other works of magic realism. This makes it "one of the best novels of the postwar period, and a major contribution to our understanding of societies riddled by ceaseless conflict and violent change," Bruce Allen observed in the Chicago Tribune Book World. "It is a great achievement, and it cries out to be read."

The struggle of women to achieve equality and self-determination forms an important part of the themes and political perspective presented in the novel and is reflected in the clashes of the various female characters against Esteban Trueba. Although Esteban believes that a woman's duty is "motherhood and the home," he recognizes that this role is a difficult one: "I would not have liked to be a woman," he says to Ferula when she expresses her bitterness at having to stay with their infirm mother. Interestingly enough, Esteban has nothing but respect for the most unconventional woman he knows, Transito Soto, whose ambition has made her into a successful businesswoman. Nevertheless, he treats women like property, raping peasant women without guilt, paying female workers less than men, and expecting his female relatives to obey his orders without question. He frowns on Nivea del Valle, who fights for the right to vote, and forbids Clara to teach the hacienda's workers about women's rights. Clara continually defies her husband's expectations, however, and essentially lives her life as she wants to, using his house to hold spiritualist sessions and minister to the poor. Blanca similarly defies her father by taking Pedro Tercero for her lover, even though she gives in to Esteban by marrying Jean de Satigny. By the time his granddaughter grows up, Esteban "had finally come to accept ... that not all women were complete idiots" and agrees that Alba "could enter one of the professions and make her living like a man." The struggle for equality has made women strong, however, as Alba discovers after she is rescued from the empty lot where the political police have dumped her. The woman who takes her in is "one of the stoical, practical women of our country." The risks she takes to help a stranger make Alba realize that "the days of Colonel Garcia and all those like him are numbered, because they have not been able to destroy the spirit of these women."

Just as Esteban believes that women have their place in life, he also feels strongly about the role of the "lower classes." He believes his tenants "are like children, they can't handle responsibility," and he is leery of letting them learn more than basic reading and math skills "for fear they would fill their minds with ideas unsuited to their station and condition." He does not recognize the injustice that his patron system perpetuates and is unable to see in the intelligent Pedro Segundo "any virtues beyond those that marked him as a good peon." The clear-seeing Clara, however, recognizes the injustices created by class differences. As a young girl she sees the "absurdity" in her upper-class mother preaching about oppression and inequality to "hard-working women in denim aprons, their hands red with chilblains." When she takes Blanca with her to visit the poor, she explains that "this is to assuage our conscience. ... But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice."

The election of the Socialist candidate does little to ease class inequities, however, as the upper-class conservatives conspire to undermine the government by arranging food shortages. After the coup, food returns to stores but the poor cannot afford it, and Alba sees a return to "the old days when her Grandmother Clara went to the Misericordia District to replace justice with charity." But, as the upper class discovers, the coup does not mean a return to the old class order; instead, the military forms a new class: they were "a breed apart, brothers who spoke a different dialect from civilians." Esteban Garcia is a member of this new ruling class, and it is his perverted desire for "justice"—fed by his grandmother Pancha's tales of his parentage—that leads him to torture Alba. She comes to understand that the Colonel's purpose was not to gain information about Miguel, "but to avenge himself for injuries that had been inflicted on him from birth."

Words and stories have a special significance in The House of the Spirits. Old Pedro Garcia is respected and loved for his storytelling ability, and Nivea tells young Clara wild stories about their family in the hope that she will ask questions and thus regain her speech. Ferula is such a gifted storyteller that "her listener felt as if he were there," and Pedro Tercero's story songs create more converts than all the pamphlets he distributes. Language has power, and Clara believes that "by giving problems a name they tended to manifest themselves...; whereas if they remained in the limbo of unspoken words, they could disappear by themselves." Names have importance as well, as the names of Clara, Blanca, and Alba form "a chain of luminous words" which connects them to each other. Clara is convinced that Spanish and Esperanto are the only languages of interest to beings from other dimensions, while Esteban believes that English is superior to Spanish in describing the world of science and technology.

It is the written word, however, that has the most significance in the novel—after all, the family's story could not have been retold without Clara's notebooks, which "bore witness to life." Uncle Marcos's books of travel and fairy tales "inhabit the dreams of his descendants," giving Clara, Blanca, and Alba a shared mythology. The writing in Clara's notebooks reflects her state of mind, and her correspondence with Blanca is "salvaged events from the mist of improbable facts." Jaime constructs a room with books, and Nicolas fills fifteen hundred pages with a treatise on spirituality. Even the government recognizes the might of the written word: "With the stroke of a pen the military changed world history, erasing every incident, ideology, and historical figure of which they disapproved." When the political police come for Alba, the culmination of their destruction comes when they set "an infamous pyre" that was fed with Jaime's collection, Uncle Marcos's books, Nicolas's treatise, and "even Trueba's opera scores." Thus, it is fitting that Alba battles this violence through writing, as both Clara's ghost and Ana Diaz suggest to her. Using Clara's notebooks, Blanca's letters, and other family documents, Alba can come to understand and survive through writing: "I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events.... I want to think that my task is life and that my mission is not to prolong hatred but simply to fill these pages."