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Luisa Valenzuela: From "Hay Que Sonreir" to Cambio De Armas

Author(s): Sharon Magnarelli
Source: World Literature Today, Vol. 58, No. 1, Varia Issue (Winter, 1984), pp. 9-13
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
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and to him the outrage against his horse, which results
in its having to put down, must remain a mystery.
Rather more perceptive- and honest- is his wife,
who prefers the writings of Johan Arndt to those of
Luther and who listens to her eldest daughter reading
about the entity of God's creation and about the fact
that the firmament exists within the human being as
well as in the universe. Anna-Stava's first, painful
encounter with a scornful Hagaris juxtaposed with her
thoughts about a farmerwhom she has always included
in her prayersbecause of his savagerytowardhis horse;
and as we might expect, the composition here turns out
not to be accidental. While nursing Hagar's dying
mother, Anna-Stava learns that the old woman once
worked for this farmer and that he has been guilty of
violating her daughter. The act of forcing an ice-cold
sledgehammer into the mouth of a horse so that the
sensitive skin sticks to the metal not only has sexual
overtones; it crystallizes the pain of being alive in a
society where the insensitivity, degradation and op-
pression emanating from fellow human beings make
the cold perpetual.
In Tjdrdalenthe man whom the community is killing
by ignoring his fractured leg has his hovel decorated
with dandelions;but before taking the flowers indoors,
the woman picking them takes care to shake out any
insects, holding the flowers close to the ground as she
does so to prevent the insects from breaking their legs.
Luisa Valenzuela: From Hay que sonreirXoCambio de armas
5W
N
| and grew up in Buenos Aires but now resides in New
iB
By SHARON MAGNARELLI Of his compatriot
Luisa Valenzuela,
Julio Cortazar de-
clares: To read her is to enter our reality fully, where
plurality surpasses the limitations of the past; to read
her is to participate in a search for Latin American
identity, which offers its rewards beforehand. Luisa
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MAGNARELLI 9
Dismissed by the community as a half-wit, this woman
clearly has a truly Arndtian understanding of the in-
terdependence of every element in Gods creation. In
a sense, then, Lidman's basic preoccupations have
changed very little since she wrote her first novel.
What has changed are their implications- as the au-
thor's world has grown more complex and divisive-
and, more significantly, their applications; Lidman
succeeds, in these three books, in giving us a novelist's
version of the Arndtian universe and alerting us to the
delicate balance of a creation in which everything is
dependent upon everything else. What makes Lid-
man's achievement so exciting is the fact that hers is, in
every sense, a work in progress, with the author's
continuing exploration of her medium becoming
bolder, more original and seemingly more crucial with
every volume.
Aberdeen, Scotland
1 Lidman's Din
tjdnare hor, Vredens barn and Nabots sten were
all published by Bonniers in Stockholm; page references to these
editions are given parenthetically following citations. Translations
are my own unless otherwise noted. For WLT's coverage of Lid-
man's recent work, see WLT 55:2, p. 263.
I would like to thank Linda Schenck for making some helpful
comments on an early draft of this translationand for permitting me
to use her translation of the passage that appears on p. 20.
Valenzuela's books are our present but they also con-
tain much of our future; there is true resplendence,
true love, true freedom on each of her pages. "x Of
course, Cortazar is correct- as far as he goes- but
Luisa Valenzuela goes much further. While it is cer-
tainly true that Valenzuela's prose centers on women
and Latin American identity, her writing is not limited
to those topics. What Valenzuela tells us, what her
prose shows us, has universal implications which
ignore national borders and gaps of gender and age.
Far from an overnight success, Luisa Valenzuela is
becoming one of Latin America's most frequently
acclaimed and highly esteemed writers. She was born
York. She comes from a literary family and has a long
career in literature and journalism, having written for
several leading Argentine newspapers and magazines,
including La Nation and Crisis, since she began her
career in journalism at age seventeen. She wrote her
first short story at age eighteen and her first novel at
twenty-one. Although Valenzuela has not received the
critical attention she deserves,2 to date she has pub-
lished five volumes of short stories in Spanish: Los
hereticos (Buenos Aires, Paidos, 1967), which has been
10 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY
translated by Hortensia Carpentier and J. Jorge Cas-
tello under the title "The Heretics" and published as a
part of the volume entitled Clara (New York, Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1976); Aqui pasan cosas raras
(Buenos Aires, Ediciones de la Flor, 1975), translated
by Helen Lane as Strange Things Happen Here (New
York, HBJ, 1979); Libro que no muerde (Mexico,
UNAM, 1980), which includes fourteen stories from
Aqui pasan cosas raras, four stories from Los hereticos
and the collection of stories which shares this volume's
title; Cambio de armas (Hanover, N. H. , Ediciones del
Norte, 1983); and Donde viven las dguilas (Buenos
Aires, Celtia, 1983). In addition, she has published
four novels: Hay que sonreir (Buenos Aires, America-
lee, 1966), also translated by Carpentier and Castello
as Clara and included in that volume; Como en la
guerra (Buenos Aires, Sudamericana, 1977), trans- " ly labeled "una aventura verbal," as we are caught up
lated by Lane under the title "He Who Searches and
included in Strange Things Happen Here; El goto
eficaz (Mexico, Mortiz, 1972), as yet untranslated;and
The Lizard's Tail (New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
1983), translatedby Gregory Rabassafrom the Spanish
novel Cola de lagartija, soon to be released by Brup-
vera (Argentina).
Unquestionably, one of the most characteristicqual-
ities of Valenzuela's prose is the plurality to which
Cortazarhas referred, for her work inevitably offers or
even demands a multiplicity of readings and interpre-
tations. At times deceptively simple, always subtly
political and/or feminist but never sententious, her
prose rarely offers solutions to the problems it posits,
for that is not her intent. Instead, her work examines
life, reality and sociopolitical structures from different
vantage points and in a variety of contexts in order to
suggest new definitions or even a plurality of in-
terpretations for situations not necessarily recognized
as problematic. Much of the wealth and beauty of her
writing resides in the fact that she often touches upon
areas and topics which are ostensibly irrefragable,
already settled or even taboo.
In this respect her work continually undermines
social and political myths, but unlike so many writers
with a political bent, Valenzuela steadfastly refuses to
replace the old mythic structures with new but equally
arbitraryand potentially equally authoritativeones. As
she herself has noted, her works are not designed to
imply that she alone knows the truth or the answers to
the problems. Instead, she attempts to present situa-
tions in ways that subject them to different in-
terpretations and possibly unique, more productive
solutions. But again the final diagnosis or cure for these
social ills, if any exists, rests with the reader, who must
be actively involved in the text and also in life outside
the text. As she says, hopefully someone else can dis-
cover some value in her words and do something about
the predicaments which tyrannize contemporary life.
In this sense her work is characterized by una bus-
queda eterna, always pursuing those uncharted truths
which will necessarily challenge and redefine that ab-
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solute, orthodox Truth (which, as Valenzuela in-
sinuates, may be a misnomer) that is so facilely
accepted as it surreptitiously dominates and engulfs us
all. And of course this search is necessarily predicated
on and conducted through the medium of language,
and Valenzuela is a virtuosa of language. Her unique
style is unfailingly vibrant, crisp and clever -
paradoxically, at times almost classical, at others
patently baroque. For example, Como en la guerra is
neatly structured on the ever-inescapable, classic,
heroic myth with its preordained discovery, subse-
quent loss, journey and final encounter. El goto eficaz,
at the other extreme, is filled with typically baroque
conceptism and linguistic play. Continually self-
conscious, with narrators frequently critical of their
stance as well as their task, her prose has been correct-
in and by the language and the linguistic twists and
turns.
Nevertheless, to speak of language as if it were a
separate entity does not mean to suggest that language
in Valenzuela's work is somehow alien to her thematic
concerns. Quite the contrary. Her discourse is not only
the means of expression but also the subject of that
expression, for Valenzuela's work centers on three
intricately related preoccupations: language, women
and politics. Her work is clearly an attempt to free
language and women from the shackles of society and
in so doing to liberate us all from language and the
sociopolitical structures and prisons which are the
products of that discourse. Although such thematic
concerns might easily produce a prosaic, pedantic,
pretentious literature, such is certainly not the case
with Valenzuela, for her work is circumscribed by its
playfulness and its humor as she toys with, manipulates
and pushes language to its ultimate possibilities. Thus,
in spite of her serious thematic interests, her work is
amusing and entertaining. There can be little doubt,
however, that the playfulness and wit, as much as we
relish them, are anything but innocent or harmless. On
the contrary, both the humor and the games are bitter,
perhaps even biting decoys or distractions for her
deadly, if indeed subtle, attacks.
But again, herein lies the richness of Valenzuela's
prose, for her novels and stories can, indeed must, be
read on several levels, both individually and col-
lectively. We can read and be amused by the language
and the puns, as in El goto eficaz, where the narrator
plays with the linguistic permutations and idiomatic
expressions based on or formed by the words gato and
perro; or, on another level, we can read for plot or
story, as perhaps in Hay que sonreir or Como en la
guerra. If we insist on literature with a serious, moral,
social, philosophical, political message, however (and
we do), these also shape each of the Valenzuela texts as
indicated; yet the reader can probably ignore these
messages, should he so choose, and many have done
so.
Still, let us be more specific and examine the

abovementioned characteristics in two Valenzuela
works which chronologically mark opposite extremes
of her career to date: Hay que sonreir (1966) and
Cambio de armas (1982). An intricate blend of first-
person and third-person narrations which alternate
between the present and the past tense, Hay que
sonreir is the tale of a young woman who comes to
Buenos Aires from the provinces without enough
money for a pretty blouse she sees in a shop window.
Prostitution supplies the money for the blouse and a
means of survival for Clara, whose only desires are to
see the ocean and to be somebody by using her head-
not unreasonable longings, but ones which ultimately
prove fatal. As the novel continues, we follow the
protagonist, an unpretentious, childlike young wo-
man, in her pseudoprogression from the domination of
one male to that of another, "viendo que se adentraba
por una huella que no habia elegido "(p. 24). She passes
from her father, who has cast her out of the house in
order better to pursue his illicit affairwith the butch-
er's wife; to don Mario, who ironically will protect her
like a "father"as he introduces her to the rules and
complexities of prostitution; to Victor and his self-
perceived but false importance with which he almost
convinces her; to Carlos, the handsome singer on
whom all her dreams temporarily settle but who
proves to be far inferior to those dreams; to Torio,
whom she tries to please with her prostitution but who
obligingly relieves her of all her earnings as he squan-
ders them on other women; and finally to Alejandro,
the fortune-teller who promises her an exotic future in
which she can use her head. And indeed she does, but
not in the way she had imagined.
The novel is very tightly structured on the classic
triad of Western religion and civilization, as it is di-
vided into three clearly delineated sections: "El cuer-
' "
po, "Transition,""Lacabeza. Such division not only
reflects but also ultimately undermines the Western
propensity to envision sociopolitical development as a
progression away from the baser elements (the physi-
cal, the body) upward toward the rational and the
spiritual (the head). In the first section Clara'sbody is
the center of attention as the rest of the characters
essentially ignore any aspect of her being other than
the physical. In "Transition"she finds that her body
can lure the man of her dreams, but since he proves so
inferior to her idealization of him, she recognizes that
perhaps the body is not the answer and that the head
may cloud the issue: "Eso es lo que tienen de malo los
suenos: consuelan cuando se esta triste, pero cuando se
esta alegre molestan. En los suenos no hay limites,
pero si los hay en la vida y lo que una imagino perfecto
resulta tener muchos puntos debiles, defectos de fabri-
ca o algo asi"(101). When she meets the fortune-teller,
her destiny leads her to follow him and use her head, as
the title of that section suggests: "una bendicion del
cielo porque por fin podre trabajarcon mi cabeza, sola,
sin este cuerpo que se me metio de por medio para
hacerme problemas" (169)- a statement which un-
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MAGNARELLI 11
equivocally reflects Christianphilosophy, in spite of its
less than grandiloquent expression. What she soon
discovers, however, is that using her head also has its
limitations: "Tanto que habia querido usar la cabeza,
ahora no podia pretender ademas usar el vientre, era
natural"(187). Clarabecomes a mere circus act, a head
with no body. Finally, in the eloquent act of violence,
hatred and aggression which concludes the novel, Ale-
jandro severs that head from that body, and she be-
comes on a very literal level a body without a head, or
vice versa.
Significantly, in spite of all this, Clara never be-
comes a tragic figure, nor does she elicit great pathos.
Valenzuela is far more subtle. One of the main themes
of the text is unquestionably contemporary woman's
plight with the social expectations that she will be
passive, silent, industrious (but only in areas of minor
import), possessed by a male (be he her father, hus-
band or pimp) and that she will continue to smile (hay
que sonreir) in spite of the exploitation or violence
perpetrated against her. Poignantly, Claranever chal-
lenges these principles. The reader may be outraged at
Clara'slot in life, but Clara herself is never more than
fatalistically resigned. She is no rebel, nor does she
demonstrate any desire to overthrow social mores; on
the contrary, she virtually accepts the social mandates
(albeit passively), but at the same time she never quite
understands them. And how can she understand the
illogic inherent in such arbitrarystructures, Valenzue-
la seems to be asking. Clarawants to be good and meet
social expectations, but her simplicity, sincerity and
ability to get directly to the heart of the situation
without floundering in rhetoric or appearances con-
tinually demonstrate how very absurd and arbitrary
those expectations are. For example, when she is told
to behave, she tries; but, "Cuando yo era chica por-
tarse bien queria decir ayudarla a mama a baldear el
piso, a lavarlos platos, y tambien ir todos los domingos
a misa. Despues portarse bien era no dejar que los
muchachos me besaran en las calles oscuras y retarlos
cuando me manoseaban. (iQue demonios querra decir
portarse bien ahora?"(96). Clara, a woman whom soci-
ety has never allowed to mature fully and assume
complete responsibility for herself, asks the questions
a child might ask- why? Why can't she go to the sea?
Why must she always wait? Why must she always
belong to someone? Why must the wife obey her hus-
band and follow him everywhere? Why can't she
speak? Why is the drawing of a car either moral or
immoral? Simple questions, to be sure, and ones we
tend to dismiss as childish; yet they are questions
which, if taken seriously and answered honestly, are
not only totally subversive but threaten to undermine
the foundations of Western society and thought. In
fact, it soon becomes apparent that those questions
have no answers unless and until we repudiate our
social structures as they now stand. In this respect,
Valenzuela's radicalismrests in her positing of a huge,
unresolved question mark that queries why society is
12 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY
inevitably composed of the rulers and the ruled
(regardless of whether we label the latter in terms of
gender, race or politics), for the oppression which
Valenzuela is challenging is a reflection of a mind-set.
Oppression of women is just one manifestation of that
mind-set which might equally oppress any other arbi-
trarily selected group.
The novel ends, however, as it began, with Clara
waiting for a man, this time for Alejandro, "el Pres-
tidigitador, el primer naipe del tarot, simbolo del dios
vivo que puedejugar con la vida y con la muerte"(196;
my emphasis), as he licks his lips and prepares to slit
her throat and make her the head without a body.
Thus, in perfect circularity, like the face of a clock, the
text ends with the body now physically rather than
philosophically or psychologically severed from the
head. The central concern of Hay que sonreir, then,
rests in the sociolinguisticallyproduced dichotomy be-
tween the body (physical, tractable reality) and the
head (soul, dreams, rationality) as it is envisioned by
Western society. Carefully analyzed, Clara has been
using her head all along, for she is a dreamer. The
incongruity results from the fact that her dreams, as
created by the discourse of popular culture, are not
reconcilable with the reality which surrounds her
physical being in the world. As Valenzuela shows, it is
not that there is any inherent disjunction between
body and mind but rather that we are surrounded by
contradictory discourse designed to oppress.
* become a viable synecdoche for the ineffable experi-
Although distanced by sixteen years and ostensibly
completely dissimilar, "Cuartaversion," the first story
in Cambio de armas, reflects many of the same pre-
occupations as Hay que sonreir. It is structured with
the same circularity, ending as Pedro begins to narrate
the story of Bella which we have just read. Like Hay
que sonreir too, it sets for itself the task of reexamining
our social, political and rhetorical mythic structures.
"
"Cuartaversion, however, is a narrativemarkedby an
even greater multiplicity of levels than any other Va-
lenzuela work to date. The story, in fact, proffers at
least five distinct possible readings, focal points or
levels of interpretation, and it is precisely these read-
ings which lead us to the principal concerns of the
story.
First, the text offers a political story, but it is a
political story hidden beneath and disguised by a love
story; as the narrator notes, a love story signals that
which can be articulated openly, a political story that
which cannot: "Porque esta parece ser la historia de lo
que no se dice. El deseo en cambio se menciona pero
no se cumple" (22). In this sense, what is not said
becomes even more important than what is said, and
the story centers on an absence, a silence: "Una histo-
ria que nunca puede ser narradapor demasiado real"
(3). Thus the narrator'sconcern, and in turn the read-
er's, is precisely this silence, this blank space: "Lo que
mas me preocupa de esta historia es aquello que se esta
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escamoteando, lo que no logra ser narrado.<iUna forma
del pudor, de la promesa? Lo escamoteado no es el"
sexo, no es el deseo como suele ocurriren otros casos
(21). We are dealing here not with the novela rosa as
described by CabreraInfante, which provides the req-
uisite bianco telon pudico when the moment becomes
too erotic.3 On the contrary, the erotic moments, the
history of the love affairbetween Bella and the ambas-
sador, are precisely the articulated moments of the
story. Sexuality no longer signals the locus of the for-
bidden; if the act of lovemaking is not described in full
detail, it is not due to conventional prudery but rather
to the fact that such description is not pertinent to the
major issue of the narrative. Politics has assumed the
role once held by eroticism, as this becomes "lahistoria
de lo que no se dice" (22). Although "Los papeles"
narran su historia de amor, no su historia de muerte
(23) and provide "solo alusion pasajera a los hechos
verdaderamente trascendentales" (24), the narrator
makes it clear that the apparent concentration on the
love story is merely a diversion of attention away from
what is more dangerous and subversive.
At the same time, the work is a detective story on at
least two levels. Not only must the reader continually
attempt to fill this void, this blank space, the un-
mentionable which pervades the text, but the very act
of writing, the narration,becomes a search for clues, a
quest for that one paradigmatic moment or event
which will summarize all, make all else significantand
ence. The narrator is presumably writing the fourth
version of the story, working from other written docu-
ments, as she creates her narration using details
selected from the "marde papeles." "Hay cantidad de
paginas escritas" (3), begins the text; "Paginasy pagi-
nas recopiladas anteriormente, rearmadas, des-
cartadas, primera, segunda, tercera, cuarta version
de hechos en un desesperado intento de aclarar la
situation" (21). The narratoracknowledges that she is
omitting what is most importantas she searches for the
crucial clue; again the focal point is the void: "No
entiendo por que la informationcrucial"ha sido omitida
en la relation de este encuentro clave (26). Thus both
the reader and the writer become detectives trying to
decipher the clues and discover the cause of the final
murder. Unlike the traditionaldetective story, howev-
er, "Cuartaversion" is just that- the fourth, not the
definitive version- and the mystery remains unsolved
again, perhaps because the solution too marks that
which cannot be expressed.
Yet, on still another level, we are presented with a
modern-dayfairytale- Sleeping Beauty, "labella dur-
miente," who will awaken with the proper (male?)
stimulus: "Pero saber que despues habra que desper-
tar de una vez por todas. Para siempre. Despertarse
despues de la fiesta. Como corresponde" (58). But it is
a fairy tale reexamined under the light of twentieth-
century politics and feminism. Unlike the fairy-tale
Sleeping Beauty, whose tale is a love story and who

awakens to live happily ever after at the side of her
Prince Charming (that is, whose sleeping inactivity is
converted into waking inactivity), Bella's trajectory is
the reverse. Inactive, apparentlypolitically ignorantat
the beginning, Bella metaphorically awakens to the
political atrocities occurring in her unnamed country
and takes an active role in opposing the tyrannical
regime. Bella's awakening, however, paradoxically
leads to her death. What Valenzuela suggests, never-
"
theless, is that "Cuartaversion is merely the other"
side of Sleeping Beauty, "el otro piano de esa realidad
(23). In both, the arousalleads to a metaphoric death.4
It is merely a question of whether the narrationfocuses
on the expressible, the love story, or the ineffable, the
political tale. In either case, the ending is virtually the
same for our female protagonists- death- and "Bella
"
es apenas una pieza mas, un peon en el juego (23).
"
Finally, "Cuarta version, as the title suggests, is
also the story of writing. It is writing about the act of
writing, discourse which watches and analyzes itself as
it writes. In this story we againencounter the linguistic
virtuosity which characterizedEl gato eficaz, but here
the narrative stance is even more self-conscious. The
story examines the literary gesture while at the same
time it dramatizes the inevitable internalization of the
subject of reading and writing as the narratoridentifies
with and eventually becomes the protagonist herself
(whom she is both reading and writing)- or is it the
other way around? "Yo soy Bella, soy ella" (4). She
continues: "Yesta que soy en tercera instancia se (me)
sobreimprime a la cronica con una protagonista que
tiene por nombre Bella (pronunciese Bel/la) y tiene
ademas una narradoraanonima que por momentos se
identifica con la protagonistay con quien yo, a mi vez,
" ductividad del texto, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispdnicos, 4
me identifico (4). The writing itself becomes a distrac-
tion, a diversion of attention which disguises the void,
for the text is composed of alternatingsections, some of
which tell the story of Bella, and others, in italics,
which tell the story of writing. The latter patently
divert our attention away from the main story each
time that story appears to be getting dangerously close
to the unspeakable. Significantly, as the text pro-
gresses, the division between the two forms of dis-
course becomes less and less discernible, until in the
final chapter the italicized discourse, like the act of
narrating, becomes indistinguishable from the nar-
rative itself. Discourse and being have become one.
Perhaps the principal difference between Claraand
Bella is that the latter is an actress in both the literal
and the etymological sense of the word. Her life, like
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MAGNARELLI 13
her story, is a performance as she dons a series of roles,
a succession of masks:"la actriz representando su pro-
" "
pio papel (5), whose role is "estar viva (7), much as
the narrator assumes her own series of disguises in
order to see herself reflected in the mirrorof Bella, for
"la otra alternativa seria mirarse, y mirarse exige
"
muchas concesiones (5). Whereas Claramerely allows
herself to be swept along with the flow of life and those
who surround her, Bella actively assumes the leading
role (58). Unfortunately, however, the script has been
written by others, and her leading role is that of pawn.
The story ends as Pedro begins to retell her story, but
significantly his narrationexhibits a change of center:
"Cuando mi tio Ramon conocio a una actriz llamada
Bella ..." (63). Thus her place on center stage is
usurped by the male. In fact, the play which is re-
hearsed during the course of the action might well be
considered a mirror reflection of the narrative itself.
Entitled El todo por el todo, it is described as a
"representation unipersonal en dos actos y montones
de actitudes, con todas las mascarasizadas como velas.
Espectaculo concebido parainvitar al publico a jugarse
tratando de burlar las barrerasde censura mientras la
posibilidad todavia existiera" (32). Again, the show is
an invitation to act much as the narrativeitself is. But,
as pointed out at the beginning of this essay, it is the
reader who must now act, for literature is not life. It
merely posits some possibilities for action in life.
Albertus Magnus College
1 TulioCortazar, "Luisa Valenzuela," Review, 24 (1979). n. 44.
2
Among the few articles published on Valenzuela's work are Z.
Nelly Martinez, "El " gato eficaz
de Luisa Valenzuela: La pro-
(1979), pp. 73^80; Evelyn Picon Garfield, "Muerte-metamorfosis-
modernidad: El gato eficaz de Luisa Valenzuela," Insula, 400-401
(March-April 1980), p. 17; Sharon Magnarelli, "Gatos, lenguaje y
mujeres en El gato eficaz de Luisa Valenzuela," Revista Iberoame-
ricana, 45 (July-December 1979), pp. 603-11; Sharon Magnarelli,
"El gato eficaz de Luisa Valenzuela," Universitario (Mexico), 187
(July 1981), p. 21; Sharon Magnarelli, "Humor and Games in Luisa
Valenzuela's El gato eficaz: The Looking Glass World Revisited,"
Modern Language Studies, 13 (Fall 1983); Sharon Magnarelli, "El
gato eficaz de Luisa Valenzuela: Juego/Fuego," Cuadernos Ame-
ricanos, Fall 1983 (forthcoming); Sharon Magnarelli, "Censorship
and the Female Writer: An Interview with Luisa Valenzuela," Le-
tras Femeninas, Winter 1984 (forthcoming).
3 Guillermo Cabrera
Infante, "Una inocente pornografa,"in his
O, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1975, pp. 39-55.
4 It is not difficult to view
Sleeping Beauty's awakeningand subse-
quent marriage as a metaphoric death since at the very least the
adolescent, the child, the asexual being has "died" and the sexual,
fertile, potential mother is "born."