I’m mostly finished reading The Passion According to G.H. at this point and it’s ranged from being an incredible experience to a completely confusing (and even boring) one at times; I’m still trying to make sense of everything. There’s an interesting take on truth that I’m not really sure how to unpack, and I felt a profound sense of struggle between disorganization and unity as everything in G.H.’s world seemed to unravel.

In the beginning, G.H. seems to harbour some kind of fear of definitive forms, writing that “My first contact with truths always defamed me,” or that “a world fully alive has the power of a hell,” for example. It sometimes felt like Lispector made confronting the fact that we are undeniably living terrifying, like something with no escape; we can easily dispel jokes or fantasies we find dissatisfying, but not reality. Finding a sense of horror or fear in things I traditionally assumed to be good was really radical and interesting to me, despite having trouble understanding what she meant. I can’t really come away feeling like I can give a good interpretation of that, but watching ideals like freedom and truth get turned into something scary because they could reveal what the formless couldn’t, was really fun.

Disorganization and a “breaking-apart” of established ideas seems to be a recurring idea in the novel as well. I noticed that even when G.H. introduces herself or walks into the maid’s room, Lispector emphasizes how the action of seeing (oneself or the unfamiliar) seems to disorient herself and begins doubting various preconceptions about herself. Later, the emptiness of the white walls make them seem like a canvas upon which G.H. can conjure up all sorts of ideas and dissociate from reality. The notion of an “I” is distorted when G.H. looks at the matter coming out of the cockroach as well, and sees “I” in all of her surroundings, writing that “I was always in life … I am the roach, I am my leg, I am my hair, I am the section of whitest light on the plaster of the wall ….” To me, the repetition helped emphasize how G.H. saw the concept of “I” as extending beyond just her life, and various explorations of basic ideas like that one helped define my reading experience. Overall, I think that the lack of plot elements allows Lispector to deeply explore how even basic elements of reality, like a bare, white, wall, devolve into meaninglessness when analyzed enough.

My question for you guys is “How does setting (in a bare room over the course of a few minutes) contribute to Lispector’s description of G.H.’s crisis?”