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Oh, To Be Heard
The fortune-teller sits there, a fat blob of a woman. She stuffs cream puff after cream puff
into her mouth, almost absent-mindedly. All the while, she is talking. She talks about her past
life, she talks about Jesus, and she talks about her wealth. She never lets Macabéa say a word,
save short, respectful answers such as “Yes ma’am.” Macabéa is forced to listen in silence to the
disturbed babbling of this stuck-up abuser of the poor (Lispector 63-66).
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector, originally published in Portuguese in 1977 and
translated to English by Benjamin Moser in 2011, tells the story of Macabéa, a poor, frail wisp of
a woman who seldom speaks. The story is narrated by Rodrigo, a lonely writer who is desperate
to tell his story, yet petrified by moving forward with it. After putting it off for half of the story,
Rodrigo describes the discouraging life of Macabéa as she is degraded, rejected, and lied to. All
the while, Macabéa speaks few words. According to a biography written on The European
Graduate School’s website, as a young woman, Lispector read Steppenwolf, the work of fellow
introvert Hermann Hesse (“Clarice Lispector—Biography”). From Hesse, she learned it was
possible for someone like herself to communicate via authorship. Just as Hesse uses Steppenwolf
to express himself, Lispector uses dialogue and silence in the The Hour of the Star to
communicate how important she felt it was to make herself heard.
Even though, much like her character Macabéa, Lispector did not have a knack for
conversation, she still had something to say. In The Hour of the Star, Rodrigo describes
Macabéa’s quiet nature like this: “She talked, yes, but was extremely mute” (21). Macabéa’s
overall silence is illustrated even more by her internal thoughts when she is with someone else.
For instance, when Olímpico, her cruel and uncaring boyfriend, leaves her for another woman,
Macabéa not only says little to defend herself, but she goes off on a mental tangent about how
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she wishes she were fat like Gloria (Lispector 52). Her lack of eloquence, even in moments of
importance, is frustrating. Similarly, before he broke Macabéa’s heart, Olimpico was frustrated
by Macabéa’s quiet nature. However, those feelings of frustration change when one learns that
Lispector was the same way. For instance, Nicholas Shakespeare, a literary critic for The
Telegraph, describes to us an instance when “[a] young woman who had read [Lispector]
obsessively begged for a meeting in the hope of ‘a life-changing connection’. When the devotee
arrived, Lispector sat and stared at her, saying nothing until the woman finally fled the
apartment” (Shakespeare). Lispector’s unnerving silence was not reserved only for adoring fans,
for Moser illustrates a time when a “frustrated journalist summed up Clarice’s responses to an
interview: ‘I don’t know. I’m not familiar with it. I’ve never heard of it. I’m not aware. That’s
not my area. It’s hard to explain. I don’t know. I don’t consider. I’ve never heard. I’m not
familiar with. There isn’t. I don’t think’” (3). Lispector appeared shy or stubborn during face-toface conversations and perhaps regretted the apparent struggle she had with verbal
communication. Indeed, as Lispector accompanied the aforementioned journalist from her
apartment, she said to him, “Sorry, I don’t like to talk” (Moser 3). Lispector’s apology leaves
one thinking she wished she was better at conversing. After completing The Hour of the Star, it
appears the feeling of frustration Olímpico experienced is purposely spun into the text in order to
relay the feelings of frustration Lispector experienced in her own life. However, rather than try to
change her nature, she found that she could speak her mind through written communication.
Furthermore, Lispector did not try harder to change her non-conversational nature
because of the way she viewed people who she believed were too frivolous with their voices.
This is illustrated through Lispector’s portrayal of her characters. For example, Macabéa’s
roommates, the Four Marias, were some of the few people who did anything kind for Macabea.
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The Four Marias were nice to her when Rodrigo told us one of them lent Macabéa a radio, an act
of kindness unprecedented in the world Lispector portrays (Lispector 28). However, the Four
Marias are hardly spoken of through the entire length of the book. We get little, if any, attention,
description, or conversation concerning the Marias via the narrator throughout the text. In
addition, the landlady of Macabéa’s apartment was apparently kind enough to give her instant
coffee and hot water, but this woman is mentioned only once in the book (Lispector 33). Neither
the Four Marias nor the landlady has a single line of dialogue. This was Lispector’s way of
telling us that the quiet people of the world are more often the kinder people. On the other hand,
the fortune-teller from the story, Madame Carlota, never closes her mouth. Olímpico also gets to
speak quite often. In fact, Rodrigo digresses about Olímpico’s knack for speaking when he talks
about Olímpico becoming a congressman:
And who can deny that he was good at speeches? He had the singsong tone and
the oily phrases, just right for someone who opens his mouth and speaks
demanding and determining the rights of men. In the future, which I don’t get into
in this story, did he or didn’t he end up in Congress? And forcing other people to
call him doctor. (Lispector 38)
If Olímpico is anything, he is ambitious. He seeks to spread his name across the whole world.
His lust for power and luxury is one quality that Olímpico and the talkative Madame Carlota
share. The behaviors of Olimpico and Madame Carlota show readers Lispector’s opinion about
influential people and what she thinks of how powerful people make themselves heard. Another
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interpretation might be that she resents powerful people for their success and its relation to their
extraverted natures.
Regardless of why she did not like to talk, Lispector’s silence is an important aspect of
her life. She obviously struggled with verbal communication, and that may have put a limit on
her ability to make herself heard. She did find a substitute, however. Lispector sees writing as a
better way for introverts, who find it difficult to talk directly to others, to make themselves heard.
As mentioned earlier, she learned this truth from Hesse at a young age. It obviously worked for
her, since here I am writing a paper about her and one of her books. Lispector seemed shy, yes,
but she was brave enough to challenge the rules of grammar to write the story the way she
wanted it to be told (Lispector 79). She was clever enough to leave the world desperately
guessing at her intentions decades after her death. Lispector is a beacon of hope to the geniuses
out there who just cannot find a way to verbally communicate with people.
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Works Cited
“Clarice Lispector--Biography.” The European Graduate School - Graduate and Postgraduate
Studies. European Graduate School EGS, 2012. Web. 30 Mar. 2015.
Lispector, Clarice. The Hour of the Star. Trans. Benjamin Moser. New York: New Directions,
2011. Print.
Moser, Benjamin. Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009.
Print.
Shakespeare, Nicholas. “Clarice Lispector: ‘Morbidly insensitive.’” The Telegraph [London]
Telegraph Media Group, 1 Feb. 2014. Web.