CLARICE
DECONSTRUCTING NATURALISM :
LISPECTOR’S A HORA DA ESTRELA / THE HOUR
STAR
OF THE
Pilar Rotella
Chapman University
USA
A writer of a highly refined, often
rarified poetic prose yet a writer also
possessed
of
a
strong
and
humanitarian conscience.
Earl Fitz
Hélène Cixous asserts: “The greatest respect I have for any work
whatsoever in the world is the respect I have for the work of Clarice
Lispector”1 and, of The Hour of the Star (HS), she says that it is “one of the
greatest books in the world”, “a divine spark”2. This glowing, heartfelt
endorsement by one of the most significant critical (and creative) voices of
our time, serves me well in order to introduce a writer certainly well
known at home – Brazil – and abroad by a discerning minority, but not
particularly famous or, even less, popular among the critical mass of
readers. Connected from the beginning with the French nouveau roman,
the lyrical novel à la Virginia Woolf, and a feminist commitment readily
apparent in her novels and short stories, Lispector has never been an
easily accessible writer, in part, at least, because she chooses to focus
much more on the deepest recesses of women’s inner self, on the
intimate sensibility of feminine consciousness, than on openly
denouncing the specific social and psychological constraints imposed by a
patriarchal society on its female constituents. Lispector’s women are
shown as isolated and trapped within the parameters of phallocentrism,
but the presentation is subtle, the narrative techniques innovative and
challenging, hence the effort required from a willing, cooperative, astute
reader – a “fit” reader – able to “see” between lines and to reach her or
his own conclusions as to the meaning and outcome of many of
Lispector’s stories. (One is reminded here of North American – USA –
texts such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, equally
woman-centered, implicitly, rather than explicitly, assuming a
revolutionary feminist position, and also exacting from the reader “the
price of ambiguity” through its disturbing, inconclusive ending).
Having said all of that, my main point here is to emphasize how
different HS is from the rest of Lispector’s fiction. This text’s uniqueness
within Lispector’s opus has been noticed by – among others – Earl Fitz,
who sees in HS “a significant change”, perhaps a response to the
suggestion, even accusation coming from some critical quarters, that
Lispector seems quite aloof from and insensitive to the realities of
Brazilian life, to the myriad problems affecting a developing country
afflicted by corrupt governments, social injustice, and rampant poverty –
the almost unendurable plight of the dispossessed, raising issues of class
and race possibly more pressing than just the question of gender
inequality3. Yet, it is a fact that, in her personal life, Clarice Lispector was
quite aware of and involved in trying to deal with such issues, but, as
stated above, her fiction does not explicitly engage any socio-political
concerns, that is, not until she writes HS, which was published in 1977,
the same year of the author’s death of cancer at age 56. HS attempts to
mix lyricism and hermeticism (Lispector’s usual narrative procedure) with
overt social relevance (a new element in this writer’s fiction). The result,
according to most (and in spite of Cixous’s unqualified praise) is a flawed
near-masterpiece.4
I agree with the widely held assumption that HS
represents Lispector’s incursion into new (for her) territory and that her
main purpose might well have been to address “one of Brazil’s most
chronic and pressing social problems: the forced migration of people
from the poverty-ridden North-east [the Sertão region] to the overcrowded
and overburdened industrial centers of the South”, to show “how life in
the North-east crippled the emotional and intellectual growth of its
people”5.
She knew those people very well, having reached Alagoas (in
the North-east) when she was two months old as her parents emigrated
from their native Ukraine, and having later lived in Recife and Rio de
Janeiro. Lispector chooses to tell the story of Macabea, a young woman
who escapes, typically, from the Sertão to the big city (Rio de Janeiro).
Macabea’s existence is marked from the beginning by abandonment,
disease, abuse, physical ugliness, and mental (almost) retardation. She
emerges in the text as “a stereotype from a sociological survey”6. Her
“vile living and environmental conditions determine and make urban
survival an issue of selfhood”7; Macabea is “a creature conditioned by
birth and already singled out as one of the world’s inevitable losers”8. And
her story/history, both individual and representative, is, or rather, could
easily have become, a naturalist novella par excellence (the text is only
86 pages long)9. Suffice it to notice the language persistently used (in the
previous quotations) to summarize the character’s fate: birth and
environment determine Macabea’s inevitable condition as one of the
wretched of the earth, doomed to lead a miserable life and – as we will see
– meet an untimely, tragic death.
However, Lispector deploys a
narrative strategy that radically alters the very essence of her tale, a
strategy that lays bare “the techniques and hardships involved in the act
of transforming story into discourse”10. She creates an educated, selfinvolved, one could say narcissistic narrator who reports the sad
developments in Macabea’s life, but even more urgently conveys his own
thoughts, feelings, emotional and intellectual responses to the events
being reported and, above all, shares with the presumed narratee, the
“encoded reader”, frequently addressed within the narrative11, the
constant flow of creative difficulties besetting him as a writer ; the
obstacles he faces in the process of extracting significant, coherent
meaning out of the – to him – banal, boring incidents in the day-to-day
living of a most common and uninteresting (barely) human being,
Macabea, hardly the stuff of which riveting stories are made. Yet, there is
not only tension, but also identification between the narrator and
Macabea12. Nevertheless, by giving Rodrigo S. M. (the narrator’s name)13
such a prominent and controlling role, by elevating him to a situation of
co-protagonist (occasionally antagonist) within the text, by foregrounding
his story as much as hers – Macabea’s –, in other words, by constructing
a narrator whose strong personality and distinctive voice take over the
narrative, the author manages to dilute, deflate, and ultimately deconstruct the novel’s naturalist potential while achieving an intriguing
blend of the personal (the narrator’s musings and running commentary
on Macabea’s life) and the representational ( Macabea’s life itself, filtered,
however, through an outspoken mediator).14
It seems appropriate to
emphasize at this point that the terms “deconstructing” and
“deconstruction” are being used here rather loosely, as auxiliary tools for
textual discussion rather than for a more specific, rigid, “orthodox”
theoretical interpretation. “Deconstruction has been variously presented
as a philosophical position, a political or intellectual strategy, and a mode
of reading”15; “to deconstruct a discourse is to show how it undermines
the philosophy it asserts”16, or, in the words of Barbara Johnson,
deconstruction equals “the careful teasing out of warring forces of
signification within the text”17. More succinctly, Douglas Atkins states
that “deconstruction ... is simply a quest”18. As suggested previously,
there is a double “quest” (in Atkins’s sense) embedded in and demanded
by HS: the author’s and the reader’s. Clarice Lispector deconstructs her
own text by undermining its apparently primary meaning, the
philosophical/political position it seems to assert (denouncing certain
unacceptable and persistent social conditions that perpetuate a state of
degradation for the inhabitants of Brazil’s North-eastern provinces) and
the reader deconstructs the same text by taking careful notice of
Lispector’s narrative maneuvers and trying to identify the “warring forces”
of signification in the novel, by trying to locate “the moment when [the]
text transgresses the laws it appears to set for itself”19. That crucial
“moment” occurs in HS with the first intervention of Rodrigo S. M. and
the reader’s awareness, from then on, of how Lispector sets up her
potentially naturalistic materials and simultaneously proceeds to deny, or
at least, diminish, their significance through the narrator’s increasingly
overbearing presence.
The character-narrator relationship is multiedged and complex; as we said before, a mixture of tension and
identification. The tension arises from the large gap separating Macabea
and Rodrigo in social class and intellectual status. She is barely literate,
earns a meager living as an office worker (though she is a very bad
typist), and shares a crowded room with three other working girls.
Undernourished, unattractive (yet dreaming to look like Marilyn Monroe),
deprived of physical and emotional support of any kind (no friends, no
relatives), at one point Macabea acquires a totally unsuitable boyfriend,
Olímpico, who treats her like dirt and eventually dumps her in favor of
her co-worker Gloria. Macabea exhibits only three distinctive features:
she is a virgin, she likes to drink Coca-Cola, and she listens to Radio
Clock, which not only gives the time at regular intervals, but also provides
odd bits and pieces of information that fascinate poor – in body and soul –
Macabea. Yet, she is “profoundly sensual”20, full of indescribable feelings
and sexual longings. In fact – we are told – “her vagina was the only
vehement sign of her existence”21. Rodrigo, on the contrary, is educated,
a middle class intellectual pursuing a career as a writer (under the
sponsorship of “the most popular soft drink in the world”22 , Coke
providing a sort of ironic link here between the have and the have- not),
financially secure though existentially anguished since he can afford the
luxury to think and examine himself and others in search of meaning or
in order to avoid the threat of meaninglessness: “So long as I have
questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing,” he
admits 23.
Of the story he is about to begin – Macabea’s story – he
claims “it is true even though invented”24 and prompted by a specific
event:
“In a street in Rio de Janeiro I caught a glimpse of perdition on
the face of a girl from the North-east”25. “With humility” – he adds – “I
confine myself to narrating the unremarkable adventures of a girl living in
a hostile city”26. However, the consequences of undertaking this task have
been devastating: “Before this typist entered my life, I was a reasonably
contented chap despite my limited success as a writer ... But the idea of
transcending my own limits suddenly appealed to me. This happened
when I decided to write about reality, since reality exceeds me”27 – an
autobiographical reference on Lispector’s part? Rodrigo S. M. decides that
the projected story “should have some seven characters, and obviously I
am one of the more important”28.
What follows is a detailed account of the
ongoing struggle between Rodrigo, the writer committed malgré lui to
trace as accurate as possible a picture of this woman he simultaneously
likes, pities, and can’t help considering an inferior, almost sub-human
creature, and the woman herself, Macabea, striving to survive, asserting
herself as a character, clinging to the narrator who is unable, try as he
may, to ignore her presence and her demands: “But why am I bothering
about this girl when what I really want is wheat that turns ripe and
golden in summer?” he asks 29.
Rodrigo is often overcome by fear (“I
am scared of starting” Macabea’s life-story30), guilt (“The fact that I am not
her strikes me as a cowardly escape”31), shame, and the difficulties –
psychological and artistic – of dealing with a subject that both obsesses
and literally pains him (a “toothache” passing through his narrative32).
Living is difficult for Macabea-like people; writing is difficult, especially for
those who write about Macabea-like people. Moreover, Rodrigo is fully
cognizant of the egotistical tendency that drives him to impose his own
needs over Macabea’s and the narrative’s : “Everyday matters annihilate
and I’m not in the mood for writing this story which is merely a form of
catharsis. I see that I am writing here and there about myself. I accept
no responsibility for what I am writing”33.
As one critic puts it, the
tension between Macabea and Rodrigo S. M. epitomizes the always
ambiguous and never easy relationship between intellectual and worker,
the few and the many, between the life of the mind and the hardships of
On the other
life, between (relative) affluence and abject poverty34.
hand, Rodrigo and Macabea achieve a high degree of closeness, even
intimacy that can only be fully understood if we realize that “Rodrigo” is,
in fact, a lightly worn mask covering the features of the true narrator, no
other than Lispector herself. She spells out her own name in the
“Author’s Dedication (alias Clarice Lispector)” and signs it as part of the
original and thought-provoking table of contents.35 Mark Axelrod denies
any illusion of an implied author in the Dedication and in what follows 36
and sees in Rodrigo S.M. a “facile alias for Lispector”, a case of literary
transvestism37. Yet, the narrator has to be an homem, a man, possibly
because “a woman would weep her heart out”38 while assessing not only
Macabea’s pathetic existence but that of “thousands of girls like this girl
from the North-east to be found in the slums of Rio de Janeiro… Few of
them ever complain and… they never protest, for there is no one to
listen”39. By impersonating a male narrator and appropriating his
phallocentric discourse, Lispector undermines its very nature, turns it
around, and “feminizes” the speaker and the speaking voice. “He is so
masculine that he becomes feminine. He is the most refined man of
masculine sex”; “Clarice is being transformed into a man who is being
transformed into ‘hardly-a-woman’” 40.
Through this man-woman, writing
his mind-body (“I write with my body,” Rodrigo affirms41, Clarice Lispector
prefigures and anticipates the concept and practice of écriture feminine (a
fact acknowledged by Cixous who repeatedly mentions the Brazilian’s
influence on her work)42. The increasing identification between Rodrigo
and Macabea makes clear that this is “not only the story of the victim,
but also a meditation on writing the victim”43 which promotes a
rapprochement between the two – writer and “written”. Both the
author/narrator and the character/narrated undergo spiritual crises and
both “find themselves on the margin of society, for both of them respond
to an inner law that means nothing to the world”44. It is not totally
surprising, then, to read, in the last pages of the story, the narrator’s
confession: “ Macabea has murdered me. [...] I have just died with the
girl”45.
The contrapuntal effect of the two alternating patterns –
tension vs. identification – with musical resonances (already established
in the Dedication, addressed to composers ranging from Schuman to
Schoenberg), resolves itself in a single harmony at the moment of death.
Early in the text we are told that “at the hour of death you become a
celebrated film star”46. At the end, as she lies dying
in the gutter –
having been hit by a “yellow Mercedes as huge as an ocean liner”47 –
Macabea finally recognizes something she seems to have been ignoring all
along, namely, that her life has been miserable 48, and yet believes that
this new awareness signifies also a beginning:
“Today, she thought,
today is the dawn of my existence: I am born”49. Surrounded by
strangers, the focus of attention she never received before, “[s]he felt like
vomiting something that was no matter but luminous. Star with a
thousand pointed rays”50. The narrator, however, though symbolically
united with his character in her stellar moment – “dying ” with her –
concludes the story with a reminder that to keep on living may require
more courage than yielding to the call of death, a particularly meaningful
(and moving) message if we remember that while finishing HS, Clarice
Lispector was facing the last stages of terminal cancer. The novel’s first
lines read: “Everything in the world began with a yes [ sim in
Portuguese]”; the last ones urge the reader : “Don’t forget, in the
meantime, that this is the season for strawberries. Sim/Yes”. After all is
said and done, after the miseries of the world have been exposed, still the
exhortation remains : carpe diem.
The preceding analysis of a text
rich in interpretive possibilities and distinguished by stylistic originality
and brilliance, hopefully has brought forth one particularly intriguing
aspect of Lispector’s performance: the way in which whatcould have
been is not, namely, why and how Macabea’s typical story of misfortune,
neglect, and defeat, so much in tune with similar stories to be found
among naturalist writers in Europe and the Americas, ultimately loses
narrative ground and is absorbed into the story of a highly idiosyncratic,
sympathetic, but self-centered narrator for whom the art of writing
represents a sustained struggle as significant and demanding as the act
of living. So, his plight in trying to tell Macabea’s story overpowers her
plight in trying to survive against all odds. Of the two “warring forces of
signification within the text” (see above), represented by Rodrigo and
Macabea, the former wins over the latter. As a result, a potentially
predictable naturalist novel (or novella) gives way to a sui generis work
that transcends any kind of generic labeling.
1 Hélène Cixous. Extreme Fidelity. In: Susan Sellers (ed.) Writing Dif ferences.
Readings from the Seminar of H. C.. New York, St. Matin’s Press, 1988. p. 18.
2 Cixous, 1988, p. 11.
3 Debra Castillo believes that Lispector’s novels “persistently seem to inspire
charges of a lack of commitment on the author’s part to the Brazilian reality” and
that her “ambiguous,” “anguished” narratives are only “tenuously connected to
specific social and political issues” (Debra Castillo. Talking Back: Toward a Latin
American Feminist Literary Criticism. Ithaca, Cornell UP, 1992. p. 188). For
Gálvez, the “assumption of a masculine stance”, the selection of a male voice to
relate the story of a female “constitutes a question of gender that quite obviously
intersects the social and linguistic surfaces” of the text, favoring both Marxist and
semiotic interpretations (Mara Gálvez-Bretón. Post-Feminist Discourse in Clarice
Lispector’s “A hora da Estrela / The hour of the Star”. In: Lucia Guerra
Cunningham (ed.). Splintering Darkness: Latin AmericanWomen Writers in Search
of Themselves. Pittsburgh, PA, Latin American Literary Review Press, 1990. p. 6374).
4 Fitz joins several other critics in affirming that Lispector is not “totally
successful” in joining together “a lyrically (and ironically) presented realization of
self with a strong, socially oriented statement” about Brazilian reality. Earl E. Fitz.
Clarice Lispector. Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1985. p. 18.
5 Fitz, 1985, p. 18.
6 Giovanni Pontiero. Clarice Lispector and “The hour of the star” ( Afterword). In:
Clarice Lispector. The Hour of the Star. New York, New Directions Books, 1992. p.
90.
7 Annabel Martin. The hour of the Star: poverty, Feminism and Realist Narrative.
Selecta : Journal of the Pacific Northwest Council on Foreign Languages (Selecta)
12 (1991), 37-40.
8 Pontiero, Afterword, p. 91.
9 In fact, according to Guerrieri, Lispector’s fiction characteristically “se define no
según lo que es, sino según lo que no es”; “defines itself not according to what it is,
but according to what it is not”. Kevin Guerrieri. La posmodernidad y el feminismo
en AHDE de Clarice Lispector. In: Explicación de Textos Literarios 28. 1-2, 19992000. p.111.
10 María José Somerlate Barbosa. A “Hora da Estrela” and the Tangible Reality of
Fiction. In: Romance Languages Annual 1, 1989. p. 379.
11 Marta Peixoto. Passionate Fictions: Gender, Narrative, and Violence in Clarice
Lispector. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 1994. p. 91.
12 Barbosa, 1989, p. 380.
13 Peixoto suggests that the initials “S. M.” stand for “sadomasochism” (Peixoto,
1994, p. 91), an interesting notion considering the character’s tendency to make
demeaning remarks about Macabea and, at the same time, engage in often
negative, self-destructive criticism.
14 In spite of its apparent originality, HS can be considered typical of the Brazilian
novel of the seventies: “ficción próxima a la tradición realista, con el debido lastre
de lo documental y la tendencia alegórica”; “a fictional work close to the realistic
tradition, with the expected ballast of documentary and allegorical elements”. On
the other hand, “la complejidad del narrador” distances Lispector from that
tradition, since the narrator “constantemente invade el texto, confesándose,
identificándose con su personaje, sin poder dejar de hablar de sí mismo,
empapado de subjetivismo”; “is constantly invading the text, confessing himself to
us, identifying with his character, unable to stop talking about himself, drenched
in subjectivism”. Vilma Arêas. Un poco de sangre. Observationes sobre “A Hora da
Estrela” de Clarice Lispector. In: Escritura 14.28, 1989. p. 411.
15 Jonathan Culler. On Deconstruction. Theory and Criticism after Structuralism.
On Deconstruction.
New York, Cornell UP, 1994. p. 85.
16 Culler, 19 94, p. 86.
17 Bárbara Johnson apud Culler, 1994, p. 213.
18 Douglas G. Atkins. Reading Desconstruction. Deconstructive Reading. Lexington,
The University Press of Kentucky, 1983. p. 10.
19 Raman Selden. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. Lexington,
The University Press of Kentucky, 1986. p. 87.
20 Guerrieri, 1999-2000, p. 112.
21 Clarice Lispector. The Hour of the Star [trans. With an Afterword by Giovanni
Pontiero]. New York, New Directions Books, 1992. p. 70.
22 Lispector, 1992, p. 23.
23 Lispector, 1992, p. 11.
24 Lispector, 1992, p. 12.
25 Lispector, 1992, p. 12.
26 Lispector, 1992, p. 15.
27 Lispector, 1992, p. 17.
28 Lispector, 1992, p. 13. Emphasis added.
29 Lispector, 1992, p. 25.
30 Lispector, 1992, p. 19.
31 Lispector, 1992, p. 38.
32 Lispector, 1992, p. 12.
33 Lispector, 1992, p. 72. Emphasis added.
34 Delacastagnè argues that HS is mainly “uma profunda reflexão sobre a relação
entre o intelectual e a massa” / “a profound reflection about the relationship
between the intellectual and the mass”. Regina Delacastagnè. Contas a prestar: O
Intelectual e a massa em “A Hora da Estrela”, de Clarice Lispector. In: Revista
Literária. 26.51, 2000. p. 87 and 90, establishing a contrast between the two that
can be seen even in concrete forms of behavior (Rodrigo’s existential nausea, for
instance, versus Macabea’s literal vomiting, p. 94).
35 For a detailed analysis of the unusual “table of contents” (as it could be called)
that precedes the text itself, see Cixous, 1988, and Mark Axelrod. The Poetics of
Novels: Fiction ans its Execution. New York, St. Marin’s Press, 1999.
36 Axelrod , 1999, p. 188.
37 Axelrod , 1999, p. 199.
38 Lispector, 1992, p. 14.
39 Lispector, 1992, p. 14. Macabea represents simplicity and also the “feminine
world in an extreme form”, hardly touched by any man, but a man is needed as
narrator because Macabea’s “lowly” condition “is a direct result of the masculine
nature of the society’s value system”. Rodrigo judges Macabea by the patriarchal
standards of his society, sees her as worthless, ugly, useless, passive, etc. while a
feminine narrator “would be tempted” to write a celebration of Macabea’s simplicity
and purity. Kara McBride. No caso a outra: A look at the Role of the Male Narrator
in Clarice Lispector AHDE. Romance Languages Annual 9, 1997. p. 610. This
critic, unlike others, sees no feminine aspects in Rodrigo’s personality.
40 Hélène Cixous. Reading with Clarice Lispector. Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press, 1990. p. 148-149.
41 Lispector, 1992, p. 167.
42 Similarities between both writers, Lispector and Cixous, include their “espousal
of fluid, open texts”, their “rejection of the phallocentric prison of binary
oppositions, and their expression of a singularly feminine libidinal desire”.
Stephen M. Hart. On the Threshold: Cixous, Lispector, Tusquets. In: L. P. Condé
and S. M. Hart (ed.). FeministReadings on Spanish and Latin American Literature.
Lewiston- New York, The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991. p. 97.
43 Peixoto, 1994, p. 90.
44 Pontiero, Afterword, p. 93.
45 Lispector, 1992, p. 85.
46 Lispector, 1992, p. 28.
47 Lispector, 1992, p. 79. It is, of course, worth noticing that the speeding car is a
Mercedes Benz, with its well-known iconic symbol prominently displayed on the
hood. Thus, “the hour of the star” assumes also an ironic meaning, since
Macabea’s “stardom” has to compete with that of the car itself.
48 Lispector, 1992, p. 78.
49 Lispector, 1992, p. 80.
50 Lispector, 1992, p. 84.