Marital Struggles: The Untold Agony of Leticia

me is simply a marital one. What he means is that I am to keep this house, and he is to provide for it [...]. That explains why he treats me the way he treats me. I never understood why he did, but now it's clear. He doesn't love me. I thought he loved me and that he stayed with me because he loved me and that's why I didn't understand his behavior. But now I know, because he told me that he sees me as a person who runs the house. (Fornes, Conduct 1986, 69) Leticia is in great pain due to the harsh treatment of her husband who humiliates and belittles her . On discussing hunting deer as a sport in the presence of Alejo, Leticia expresses her rejection of such a sport as she regards deer as ''the most

(2000, 101)

Accordingly, Women should resist in order to assert their identity in society, and this is actually what Leticia decides to do. She resolves to resist the oppression inflicted upon her; her resistance is embodied in her insistence not to be self-reliant and cease to yield to the authoritative role of Orlando. she should be financially independent and have the freedom of determining her life. Like Mae in Mud , Leticia decides to resist the oppression and subjugation she undergoes under patriarchy by establishing her identity through learning to read and write and pursuing higher education. She tells Alejo:

He [Orlando] has no respect for me. He is insensitive He doesn't listen. You cannot reach him. He is deaf. He is an animal. Nothing touches him except sensuality. He responds to food, to the flesh[...]. I cannot change him [...]. I want to study so I am not an ignorant person. I want to go to the university. I am tired of being ignored. I want to study political science [...]. I would like to be a woman who speaks in a group and have others listen. (Fornes, Conduct 1986, 69-

In a telephone conversation, she tells her friend Mona, ''He [Orlando] is violent. He has become more so. [...] He tortures people. I know he does. [...] How awful Mona He mustn't do it'' (Fornes, Conduct 1986, 85). Furthermore, Orlando psychologically tortures Leticia by bringing Nena, a street young girl of twelve, whom he kidnaps to his warehouse in order to rape her. Later, he keeps her in his basement ''as a sex slave'' (Portified 2000, 208). He repeatedly rapes her even in the presence of Leticia who hears him ''making love with her'' (Fornes, Conduct 1986, 81). As Scott. T. Cummings states, Leticia's ''gradual recognition of Nena's presence in the house parallels her gradual recognition of Orlando as a professional torturer'' (2013, 112). This actually results in the fact that she starts to suffer from intolerable pain due to her husband's cruelty, animality and oppressive practices against her. In her article ''Gender Perspectives and Violence in the plays of Maria Irene Fornes'', Catherine Schuler points