I can’t say that I really enjoyed this week’s reading as much as in past weeks. I felt the novel to be a little repetitive and a little boring I understand what Lispector was trying to do in the text however I don’t think the text flowed well enough or was at all captivating. I can appreciate the room within the text that allows for analysis and I do believe that the novel goes quite a bit deeper them the plot.
The novel follows the story of the previous day in the life of G.H. The wealthy sculptress finds herself cleaning out the room of her now ex-maid. She assumes that it will be a fulfilling task as she imagines it being messy and dirty. She is very surprised to find the room extremely tidy, clean, and empty. She describes the room as “a portrait of an empty stomach.” she begins to start overanalyzing the emptiness. She goes over to the wardrobe and sees a cockroach and kills it. GH is overcome with different thoughts and emotions. In the novel, it begins to feel like she’s overreacting to a pretty small event.
GH starts losing control and all of these emotions cause her to start questioning her being and send her into a spiral. I think that this is obviously part of a bigger issue within her life and that this small event was just the breaking point. This can be analyzed in several ways, ut the conclusion that I came to while reading was that for a while, G.H has probably had reservations about her life and lifestyle and has tried to push them down with her overcompensating vanity. I think that this all catches up to her while she’s standing alone in a room distraught over a cockroach.
My question this week is, although it seems as though G.H’s reactions and emotions are a little far-fetched, can you remember a time in your life that you overreacted to something small that was actually a reflection of a bigger issue in your life?
“this small event was just the breaking point.”
Yes, this is fair enough. But it makes me think, along the lines of your question, about how small details can have big effects… while sometimes larger changes (I’m thinking here of Black Shack Alley, though I’m not sure you read it, and its depiction of the abolition of slavery) ultimately make little difference in the end.
You ask an interesting question, pointing out the scale issue; Jon talks about this in his lecture. It seems that Lispector destabilizes the relationship between the small and the infinite. A sometimes more minor event can have significant consequences; think about the madeleine scene in Proust that triggers a vivid memory. And some of these events-triggers are pretty random.
Hi brianna! Great response 🙂 I liked the question you asked and it remined me of when Agostino from Alberto Moravia began to rebel against his mother and even snuck out to go to a brothel and overreacted to his mother’s new partner out of jelousy. Agostino’s new instrests sprung from the bigger feelings he had towards his mother.