The Tree Bombal Analysis

In Bombal’s short story, “The Tree” the author uses the symbol of a rubber tree all throughout the story. It may seem as if the tree is just a symbolization of the marriage of Luis and Brigida, but it actually is used to show how Brigida matures and develops as an independent woman with time in male dominant society. “How that huge rubber tree Chattered” (10). Brigida is living in a male dominant society where her husband controls her every move, but as the story progresses she develops into an independent woman taking control of her own destiny.
As the main character Brigida is listening to music at the beginning of the story she begins to flash back into her past. When Brigida first talks about the tree, “It is the tree outside her dressing

room window. She had only to enter the room to experience an almost overpowering sense of well-being” the reader links the tree with marriage or a man (10). When Brigida walks into the room next to the tree she begins to feel assertive and she has a sense of well-being. This suggests that being in a male dominant society can make a woman more dependent on a man or just on the marriage as a whole. As the story progresses on, the marriage of Luis and Brigida begins to slowly deteriorate with Luis not giving any attention to Brigida and lying to her. As this conflict between the two is slowly unfolding the tree begins to welter, “The leaves came loose and fell” the tree seems to be dying with the season change, just as the marriage is falling apart with the constant absence of Luis and Brigida’s longing for love(13). It feels as if the marriage that once was as lively as the tree used to be can also bewilder and diminish under the right circumstances that constrict the growth of each.
Bombal wants to put emphasis on something a little deeper than just the marriage of Luis and Brigida, but how Brigida has to overcome constraints as a woman in a male dominant society. The tree itself is the main symbol for Brigida throughout the story and with each change in the tree brings something new to Brigida as a person instead of her marriage with Luis. “Heavy rain began to lash on its cold leaves” (12). Brigida is the tree that is standing there taking the wrath of the rain. Bombal puts this in the text to show how trees themselves need something like the rain to survive and stay healthy, even if the rain beats the tree with its high volume of power. Luis is just like the rain in the fact that Brigida needs him to survive in this drought stricken world where women are not treated equal to men. As the marriage does not seem to get any better between the two, only worse, Brigida tries to hide her emotion just as the tree hides its weathered texture “The top of the rubber tree remained green but underneath it turned red – darkened like the worn-out lining of a sumptuous evening cape” and tries to save what is left (13). The tree doesn’t allow all of its leaves fall off and turn color all at one time just because it can, but because it wants to try and save what it has, just like Brigida holding back her unwanted emotions to keep Luis in her life.
The author writes about how the tree grows “twisted roots that pushed up the paving stones on the sidewalk, and the tree overflowed with laughter and whispering” as it matures (13).

This is used to explain how Brigida is beginning to develop into an independent woman like the tree builds away from the soil of the ground and overcomes the stones, Brigida is able to overcome a suppressive marriage and start to think and act for herself as a woman. Throughout page 14, after the tree is cut down, the room that Brigida always admired the tree in is lit up like never before and the world is opened up from the windows point of view. This event in the story brings light into Brigida’s life getting a new opening and pursuing it even under the anti-feministic society that she lives in. “The tree, Luis the tree! They have cut down the rubber tree” (14). As the story begins to end, in an unforgiving manner Brigida tells Luis that it’s time for her to leave after the time that they had spent together was just miserable for her. The tree represents a yearning for a change that Brigida holds as a have to thing after this marriage is over. A new beginning for the street corner can come as a new tree is planted in the spot of the old tree. Just as a new beginning can come for Brigida with a new marriage or a new endeavor on her own. Brigida matures as a person because of how she realizes she doesn’t need someone to hide the world from her when she can be independent and inspire to see it

herself.

The tree and Brigida are used parallel to one another all throughout the story and the big idea of this symbolization with the changing of the tree is to show the reader how a suppressed woman is challenged to change to make it on her own. Brigida as a person is referred to as childish many times in the story, so she had to go through a complete emotional and intellectual overhaul throughout the story to end up in a music theater like she is at the opening of the text.