Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction: The Feminine Voice in Latin American Literature
- 1 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648/51?–1695)
- 2 Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814–1873)
- 3 Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957)
- 4 Alfonsina Storni (1892–1938)
- 5 Silvina Ocampo (1903–1993)
- 6 Clarice Lispector (1920–1977)
- 7 Rosario Castellanos (1925–1974)
- 8 Elena Poniatowska (1933– )
- 9 Alejandra Pizarnik (1936–1972)
- 10 Luisa Valenzuela (1938– )
- 11 Isabel Allende (1942– )
- 12 Rosario Ferré (1938– )
- 13 Laura Esquivel (1950– )
- 14 Laura Restrepo (1950– )
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Alfonsina Storni (1892–1938)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction: The Feminine Voice in Latin American Literature
- 1 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648/51?–1695)
- 2 Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814–1873)
- 3 Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957)
- 4 Alfonsina Storni (1892–1938)
- 5 Silvina Ocampo (1903–1993)
- 6 Clarice Lispector (1920–1977)
- 7 Rosario Castellanos (1925–1974)
- 8 Elena Poniatowska (1933– )
- 9 Alejandra Pizarnik (1936–1972)
- 10 Luisa Valenzuela (1938– )
- 11 Isabel Allende (1942– )
- 12 Rosario Ferré (1938– )
- 13 Laura Esquivel (1950– )
- 14 Laura Restrepo (1950– )
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Esta mañana, algo después de las 8 horas, varios muchachos que transitaban por la playa La Perla, descubrieron junto al mar, flotando en las aguas, un cadáver de mujer. Traído a la orilla se comprobó que estaba perfectamente vestida y presentaba una expresión tranquila.
(Etchenique, 1958: 17).[This morning, sometime after 8 am, children crossing La Perla beach discovered the body of a woman floating in the water. When she was brought onto the beach she was found to be perfectly dressed and looked calm.]
This description of a peaceful, well turned-out corpse was taken from an early newspaper report of Alfonsina Storni's suicide by drowning, in 1938. Cited in Etchenique's loving tribute, it is an image that has played a significant role in subsequent mythologizing of Storni as a poète maudit(e). It is tempting to hope that Storni would have welcomed this image of her as ‘perfectly dressed and calm’, as she was a shrewd commentator on fashion. And yet it is an image that also has more abject connotations, linking Storni's image to that of suicidal women writers like Woolf or Plath and to the literary iconography of the doomed Ophelia who recurs in the watery ‘Jane-Does’ of Carver's ‘So Much Water So Close to Home’ (1981), Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), and Ray Lawrence's Jindabyne (2006).
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- Information
- A Companion to Latin American Women Writers , pp. 69 - 82Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012