In Isabel Allende's "Nina Perversa”, we're introduced to Elena an eleven-year-old child who is a very soft spoken, almost invisible figure. Her days revolve around housekeeping activities and spying on the boarding house guests on her mother's behalf. Elena completely changes when Juan Jose Bernal becomes a guest in the boarding house and her attitude towards him transforms from hostility to an all-consuming obsession. Although the focus is largely on Elena's obsession with Bernal, the objective of this exchange is to provide insight on how this affects the relationship between Elena and her mother. Bernal is the object of Elena’s affection due to the fact that he has managed to obtain her mother’s love in a way she has not been able to.
"Niña
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Perversa" revolves around Elena and the effect that Bernal's stay has on her. Initially, Elena is quite shocked that her mother would allow such a guest to stay at their boarding house as he did not meet any of her expectations. Not only was he was not able to pay for a month's fee in advance, he also requested an overly particular diet and insisted on sleeping in all day. Soon, Elena began to notice changes in her mother. Her mother began to wear perfume, eyeliner, lipstick and Elena even noticed her mother bought new lingerie. "Las primeras semanas Elena sintió odio por ese hombre que ocupaba todo el espacio de la casa y toda la atención de su made"(Allende 28). After noticing all of the sudden changes, Elena began to despise this man who not only changed the household rules, but also took up all of her mother’s attention. As Clair Lindsay stated “Originally, the child, in its dependence on her, does not recognize that the mother could have any separate interests from it and on finding that she does, cannot understand” (141). Elena never received much love and affection from her mother, thus to observe that it was being given to someone else sparked confusing and rage within her. This hate turned into an extensive obsession on the night that Elena heard Bernal perform. The music coming from his guitar and the words coming out of his mouth made her feel something she had never felt before. Elena’s obsession develops to the point that she constantly sneaks into his empty room and undresses herself on his bed imagining what his touch would feel like. One day she discovers Bernal and her mother are having an affair and she sub comes to a depression from the heartbreak. However, she becomes determined to use her mother’s powers of seduction to become the object of Bernal's love. We see a rise in her infatuation reach a climax when she sneaks into Bernal's room on a Thursday while he's sleeping and proceeds to lay down on top of him and kiss him. Unaware that it is Elena, Bernal kisses her, but he is instantly awakened when he feels how light she is and comes to the realization that she is not his lover. Bernal sees that it was Elena and calls her a wicked girl for attempting to do such a thing. The story then fast forwards to when Elena is twenty-seven and comes home to present her fiancé. The roles have since reversed and Bernal has been obsessed with the thought of Elena ever since that Thursday afternoon, years ago even though he married her mother. He professes his love to her and to his dismay, she cannot even recall the event he is talking about! While we cannot deny the important role that Elena's obsession with Bernal plays in this story, it gives us the underlying information that is necessary to understand that Elena's true intentions were to gain her mother’s love, not Bernal’s. In Claire Lindsay's "Re-Reading the Romance: Genre and Gender in Isabel Allende's Niña Perversa.", she examines Allende’s use of romance in Cuentos de Eva Luna and specifically in “Niña Perversa” since Allende was highly critical of the romance subject in her early days as an author.
She also approaches the story with a psychoanalytic approach, suggesting that this story represents an Oedipus complex, while also recognizing that it could be a reverse Oedipus complex in which her actions drove her to become further connected with her mother. “The attachment to Bernal, as I have argued, is an ephemeral stage in this rite of passage, which does not undermine or prejudice the primary mother-daughter relationship. Therefore, I would suggest that the story is inherently a celebration of this dyadic mother-daughter relationship over and above the Freudian/Lacanian version of the female child's entry into the Symbolic Order"(Lindsay 143). Here, Lindsay is supporting the argument that Bernal’s relationship with Elena is not as important as that of her and her mother. However, Lindsay believes that this plays a part in a much bigger picture where Elena seeks out how to become a woman and learn her place as a patriarch by learning from her mother’s relationship with Bernal. Nevertheless, it’s important to note that the central theme of this story focalizes on the mother-daughter
relationship. Elena's mother, a widow, was once a beautiful, caring, young woman. However, "agotada por el calor y el trabajo de la casa, no tenía ánimo para ternuras ni tiempo para observar a su hija"(Allende 23). She has become a woman overwhelmed by the work of running a household that she no longer had the energy nor time to pay attention to her daughter. We later learn that they hardly communicated at all and when they did it was always about their boarding house guests. The clear lack of relationship between Elena and her mother is the driving factor to Elena's obsession with Bernal due to the fact that Elena is simply acting out in hopes of gaining her mother’s attention. She wasn’t truly in love with Bernal, instead she was intrigued by the object of her mother’s affection and wanted replace Bernal in his role. When we closely examine Elena’s fascination with Bernal we cannot ignore the fact that she originally despised him. She could not understand what her mother could possibly see in a man like him. The turning point was during the night where Bernal played music for the boarding house. While it seemed like Elena has fallen in love with him because of his power with music, in reality it because of her mother’s transformation occurring right before her eyes. She was finally awarded the affection she didn’t realize she desired. Her mother grabbed her by the hand and began to dance with her. Both of them enchanted by the music, were able to experience a physical intimacy that lacked in their relationship. Consequently, “The young girl’s early fascination with Bernal and her contrived ‘seduction scene’ might be interpreted as forms of penis envy engendered out of love for her mother” (Lindsay 144). Elena did not want to be in a physical, sexual relationship with Bernal. This is noticeably clear considering the fact that Elena has not even engaged in puberty yet. She does not have a clear understanding of what a relationship between a man and a woman entails, which makes our theory that much more likely. She wants to be Bernal because he represents the object of her mother’s love and affection. Although Elena ultimately failed to replace Bernal and end his relationship with her mother, it’s the existence of Bernal’s character that allows for Elena and her mother to finally create a meaningful relationship. One would think that due to Elena’s time away in the convents and at university, her bond with her mother would fade. Yet, “What is certain is that the mother-daughter relationship survives intact, as the mother retains contact with her daughter in later years through regular visits, while the relationship with Bernal is terminated and forgotten (at least by Elena)” (Lindsay 145). Elena is successful in being able to secure her mother’s love and affection and it’s clear that her infatuation with Bernal is a faded memory in the past. The same cannot be said for Bernal, who throughout the years became quite obsessed with the memory of that Thursday afternoon. Nevertheless, Bernal was never Elena’s target for affection and in fact the relationship was so meaningless that she fails to remember the specific events of that afternoon and rejects his declaration of love.
Write-up: Mama Elena is a stern and bitter woman who oppresses Tita to be her caretaker through the family tradition. She keeps Tita from her true love, Pedro, and it is later revealed that Mama Elena herself once suffered from a lost love, embittering her for the rest of her life. Any child of her is deemed unworthy when he/she does something that is against her "rules." She takes this to the extreme where the rules are imposed on her more "public family," John Brown and Pedro included. Her stern stature is noted when her daunting gaze makes the Revolutionary general Juan Trevino uneasy. Eventually, her pride and distrust is revealed to be her major flaw which causes her death.
Throughout Isabel Allende’s Story, “The Little Heidelberg”, love and magical realism can be observed. There are plentiful details in describing the physical characteristics of the setting and the people and scenery within the tale. These techniques reinforce the theme, of which is unrequited love.
Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue is divided into five sections and an epilogue. The first three parts of the text present Mary/ María’s, the narrator, recollection of the time when she was nineteen and met José Luis, a refuge from El Salvador, for the first time. The forth and fifth parts, chronologically, go back to her tragic experience when she was seven years old and then her trip to El Salvador with her son, the fruit of her romance with José Luis, twenty years after she met José Luis. And finally the epilogue consists a letter from José Luis to Mary/ María after her trip to El Salvador. The essay traces the development of Mother Tongue’s principal protagonists, María/ Mary. With a close reading of the text, I argue how the forth chapter, namely the domestic abuse scene, functions as a pivotal point in the Mother Tongue as it helps her to define herself.
Arredondo exposed Luisa as a dynamic character because during the story the readers can see the changes that her personality had over the time. At the beginning of the story the reader can see how Luisa takes care of her uncle with devotion and love, but after they married she considered it as a disgusting duty. Ines Arredondo described Luisa as woman who has the power of “purify everything” (81), but after suffering the physical abuse of her uncle, all her innocence disappear. She was an innocent girl that was reserving herself for marriage. However, after married her uncle, she started seen the things in a different way. Now, she thinks of herself as “the vilest of harlot” (87). The way that the author exposes Luisa is like happy young lady that thanks to the circumstances enter to a deep depression that changes her life and she “was not able to go back to who I [she] was”
Elena Poniatowska escrita durante una epoca de cambio en Mexico. Antes de sus obras las mujeres mexicanas eran sometidos, docil, y pasivo. En la tiempo de sus obras las mujeres estaba tratando salir de los estereotipos de antes. Esta problema social tomo un afecto en Elena. Aunque ella no viene de un movimiento literatura directamente, ella escrita con el concepto de compremetido. En su narrative El Recado ella crea un mujer estereotipical que no puede controlar sus emociones. La titula es eso porque ella viene a ver su amante, pero el no esta, asi ella escribe las cosas que sentia. La perspectiva es de un personaje y ella nunca interacta con otros personajes. En facto la unica descripcion de un personaje otro de la protagonista es de su amante Martin. Habla de otros personajes, pero solamente de sus acciones. Porque ellas es la unica perspectiva que tenemos es sencillo a sentar compasion para una protagonista de quien nombre no aun sabemos. Ella da la descripcion de toda que vea, y mas importante todo que se sienta. Tambien tropos y figuras retoricas dan un tono significante al poema. Estos sentimientos de la portagonista y el tono emocional de la narrativa transporta una tema de una mujer estereotipical y debil quien quiere ser reconocido.
...en-year-old girl”. She has now changed mentally into “someone much older”. The loss of her beloved brother means “nothing [will] ever be the same again, for her, for her family, for her brother”. She is losing her “happy” character, and now has a “viole[nt]” personality, that “[is] new to her”. A child losing its family causes a loss of innocence.
Bechdel decides to live her reality and be her true self. After she reveals this information to her parents, her mother reveals the truth about her father. Bechdel’s father had affairs with many other men throughout his lifetime. Bechdel is shocked and does not understand how her father was able to do that for so long. When Bechdel realizes this, she instantly feels as if now she may be able to connect with her father. Her father was living behind the appearance of the perfect husband and man to hide his actual sexuality of being gay. She feels as if they can connect through their changing sexuality, even though she has decided to come out while her father has
Evidently, with what readers presume to be the “man of her dreams”, Clemencia's mother seems to be in her own world as she completely disregards her life with her former husband and their children. This does not bode well for Clemencia as she holds a lot of resentment towards her mother, that will likely never resolve due to the fact that Clemencia's mom is not around in the world anymore. Even though, her mother may not be in this world anymore, Clemencia will always wonder why her mom did marry her father.
The narrator does not hesitate to show how much Honoria and Charlie care for each other. Though Honoria was just a little girl, growing up without a father is still harsh. Still her love for Charlie is unconditional, and questions about the past are not brought up. Their strong relationship is alm...
...cts of the mother and the descriptions, which are presented to us from her, are very conclusive and need to be further examined to draw out any further conclusions on how she ?really? felt. The mother-daughter relationship between the narrator and her daughter bring up many questions as to their exact connection. At times it seems strong, as when the narrator is relating her childhood and recounting the good times. Other times it is very strained. All in all the connection between the two seems to be a very real and lifelike account of an actual mother-daughter relationship.
The daughter alludes to an idea that her mother was also judged harshly and made to feel ashamed. By the daughters ability to see through her mothers flaws and recognize that she was as wounded as the child was, there is sense of freedom for both when the daughter find her true self. Line such as “your nightmare of weakness,” and I learned from you to define myself through your denials,” present the idea that the mother was never able to defeat those that held her captive or she denied her chance to break free. The daughter moments of personal epiphany is a victory with the mother because it breaks a chain of self-loathing or hatred. There is pride and love for the women they truly were and is to be celebrated for mother and daughter.
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
Meursault’s Maman, when introduced to the reader, has already passed away; however, her past relationships that disclose themselves when Meursault attends the funeral directly contrast her son’s emotional receptivity, or lack thereof. During Maman’s funeral, a woman “in the second row...emitted a little choking sob” (8). The keeper subsequently relieves Meursault of his frustration by explaining to him that “she was devoted to [his] mother” and that they were close friends (8). Along with friendship, Maman also embraces romance during her last few days with her relationship with Thomas Perez at the home, where “[he] and [maman] [are] almost inseparable” and “people [would] tease Perez about having a fiance” (10). Maman’s attempt to form de...
The persuasive attempts in both literary works produce different results. The effectiveness of the mother’s guidance to her daughter is questioned since the girl cannot recognize the essence of her mother’s lesson. Despite that, the mother’s beneficial instruction serves as a standard for the daughter to reflect her future behaviors in order to live up to the community’s expectations. On the other hand, Anne’s value of candid expression and lasting relationship dissuades her from obliging to her family’s meaningless duty to place her love and interest above to experience fulfillment in life.
Forche, Carolyn. “The Memory of Elena.” Literature. 5th ed. Ed. Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 1070-71.