Ambiguity and Gender in the New Novel of Brazil and Spanish America: A Comparative Assessment

Chapter Seven: Writers, Characters, and the Journey of the Mythical Hero

The border between Art and Life looks like a frame. -Jorge Guitart, "On Borders" 7 00 WRITERS, CHARACTERS, AND THE JOURNEY OF THE MYTHICAL HERO As we have seen, the Spanish American and Brazilian new novels of the 1960s and early 1970S offer very different views of gender opposition , the cornerstone of patriarchy. In Spanish America this opposition remained firmly established among the major works, whereas the Brazilian new novelists of the same period, working out of a long-established tradition of language consciousness and semantic ambiguity, erased or challenged this opposition in their works. The contrasting attitudes of these two narrative traditions toward male/female binarism playa key role in explaining the primary difference between the new novel of Brazil and that of Spanish America. Female writers such as Maria Alice WRITERS, CHARACTERS, AND THE MYTHICAL HERO CX) 131 Barroso, Nelida Pinon, Lygia Fagundes Telles, and' Clarice Lispector ranked among the most respected of the Brazilian new narrativists of the time, while their Spanish American counterparts, although productive, were not among the most frequently lauded novelists (Elena Garro is a case in point). In each literature, the prevailing attitude toward gender opposition directly affected the crafting of individual works as well as the creative freedom and critical recognition of the writer. The gender opposition that is of crucial importance to patriarchy rests on a confusion of the literal with the figurative. That is, the person acting out a social role in the day-to-day experience of living is confused with an image-jung"s anima or animus-that represents the feminine or the masculine principle. As set forth by joseph Campbell, the heroic journey, in which this confusion is resolved, is a possible allegory for the artist -in this case, the Latin American new narrativist. Placing the new novels within the perspective of the mythical journey lifts them out of the limited context of what j ung describes as "the thoroughly extraverted attitude of the VVestern mind" (Aspects 8o)-an attitude rooted in and limited to outer reality-and locates them within the realm of the symbolic .I As we have tried to show in the preceding chapters, reliance on a kind of mimesis associated only with conventional, externalized views of reality limits creativity, whereas an exploration of interiority opens up new vistas of possibility, a condition necessary to the creative act. Indeed, in his comments on Perto do Corar;iio Selvagem, the Brazilian critic Benedito Nunes refers to an alternative kind of mimesis, an interior one, in which the writer sounds the depths of personal reality to create new literary forms and figures (xx). The image of the heroic journey as an internal quest that transcends reliance on external reference points up an important distinction between the two narrative traditions-their disparate attitudes toward the legitimacy and inevitability of the patriarchal system. Although patriarchy, especially its violence, is sometimes presented in a negative light in the Spanish American narratives, its continued presence remains unchallenged . In the Brazilian novels, however, the heroic journey offers a greater variety of attitudes, forms, and gender developments. Less reliant on either externalized or conventional norms of mimetic reference, these novels not only question patriarchy (although Grande Sertao: Veredas leaves it still structurally intact in spite of challenges by individuals) but, in the case of Lispector and Lins, allow the journey to serve as a model 132 ex::> WRITERS, CHARACTERS, AND THE MYTHICAL HERO of escape from the vicious circle of master/slave relationships that, as seen in the preceding chapters, inhibit the development of both the male and the female character and curb free literary expression by men andeven more perniciously-women writers. An examination of the major components of the heroic journey within these new novels reveals a long list of failures (on the hero's part and on the ability of the implied author to explain these failures) and a few successes . Only two of the writers, Lispector and Lins, offer real alternatives to the patriarchal dilemma, however; the others leave the reader to lament with the characters the apparently inescapable trap of patriarchy. In all the cases of the failed hero, violence is an important-sometimes a central-feature of the narrative. The implicit assumption of the characters -and perhaps of the authors-is that control of one's own destiny must be preceded by power over the other (a fundamental premise of patriarchal thought) and that...