I was excited to read from this week’s author considering I had heard much about her but never got around to reading her work. I once went to a Spanish school named after Gabriel Mistral with only had a vague idea of her celebrated legacy as a Chilean poet. To be honest, I’ve always been intimidated by poetry and usually find it the hardest of the literary genres to interpret. While I did struggle to grasp meaning from several of the poems collected in this anthology, I did enjoy the lyricism and artistry of most of them.
Many of the poems featured in this anthology are titled using the template “The ____”, with the blank usually being substituted by a woman characterized by her occupation, mood, or verb- hence the title of the anthology, Madwomen. These chapters and the title plainly suggest that these women are “mad”, which I truly doubt as a generalization. At least in my interpretation, many of these poems are written from the perspective of speakers facing miserable circumstances in not extremely ab-normal ways. One of my favourites is “The Ballerina”, which depicts a woman literally shaking off her woes through liberating dance. Another fascinating one is “The Storyteller”, from a woman who is burdened with revealing unsavoury truths to others. These are complex, tortured women- not “mad” women. I think the lecture makes an important note on this- that is, these women are confined by a patriarchal structure that exalts order.
Above all, the Nobel Prize recognizes high-calibre literature that has a formidable impact on global culture. Clearly, Gabriel Mistral has achieved that with her life’s work. I am not an expert on Mistral nor the Nobel’s criteria, but I can gather from just my short review of one of her works that Mistral has a special talent for lyrical and emotional poetry. Obviously, representation of one of the world’s most populous areas is tantamount for an award that claims to capture the best of global literature. However, Mistral stands out regardless of this regional lens. I believe in recognizing the context of art- its impact, origins, and significance- this step adds another enriching layer to reading Mistral’s work. Despite this, as someone not from Latin America I cannot speak to whether it encapsulates the whole region. Overall, Madwomen has universal appeal because of its honest depiction of the compromising aspects of life.
My question for the week: Do you think any of the speakers in this anthology are truly “mad”? Would you say they respond reasonably to their circumstances?
Good question! I do not think that the speakers are necessarily clinically mentally unwell but that is likely not the definition of ‘mad’ Mistral was going for. I think that ‘mad’ describes how they are perceived and as was mentioned in the lecture, how women cope with society’s many restrictions and stigmas. I also believe that it is to an extent very difficult to not be perceived as mad in some way or another if you resist the social norms, which was very easy to do, even more so during Mistral’s lifetime.
Although Prof. Beasley-Murray already touched on it briefly, the topic of the “Madwoman” is present in Western literature, eminently since the 19th century (Madame Bovary, among others). But Mistral reverses that genealogy, starting from Clytemnestra to give us the other voice, the reverse of those figures in the culture, to a certain point, deconstructing them.
I don’t think the women and characters depicted in Mistral’s poems are inherently mad, maybe some of them, but not all of them perhaps. Rather, I think they are driven mad, by whatever circumstances they find themselves in. It might be the burdens, the responsibilities, the voids, and everything in-between that drives these women to madness.