Existence

“The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman” begins with the young woman sitting at her dressing table, combing her hair, gazing at her reflection in the three mirrors: “her eyes did not take themselves off her image, her comb worked pensively, and her open dressing gown revealed in the mirrors the intersected breasts of several women” (Lispector 1555). With this vision, the idea of the woman’s fragmented self-image and questions about the meaning of existence are introduced to the plotless story which is focused on the protagonist’s inner emotional state. “Who am I?” is a key hypothetical question posed by the text. Prompted by seeing the mirror’s reflection, the young woman begins a flirtatious conversation with her images. “’Maria Quiteria, my dear’… ‘And who, might we ask, would she be?’ they insisted gallantly, but now without any expression. ‘You!’ she broke off, slightly annoyed. How boring!” (1556). Maria sees her existence as a wife and mother as dull. Maria scolds herself, “what a lazy bitch you’ve turned out to be” (1557). This self-condemnation answers the hypothetical question: what kind of woman am I?   

Unhappy and angry, Maria is unable to recognize the reason for her unhappiness, except when she is drunk, “and even then she can express her feelings only metaphorically… Disgusted at the thought of being a lobster, a passive object of consumption, the urge to assert herself as an active and autonomous being subsequently produces a different image in her mind” (Muller 38). Maria replaces the lobster image with a scorpion, predatory and dangerous. She tries to see herself as a desirable young woman, but resorts to self-deprecation, labeling herself as a slut, and repeating the insult “What a slovenly, lazy bitch you’ve become” (Lispector 1560). Seeing herself as a failure in the traditional, boring roles women fulfill, Maria’s interior monologues are the only outlet for expressing her unhappiness. Her husband does not listen, interpreting rejection of his advances as illness. She is alone and filled with self-loathing, unable to fuse her fractured self-image into a strong, unified self.

Works Cited

Lispector, Clarice. “The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 1555-1560.

Muller, Ingrid R. “The Problematics of the Body in Clarice Lispector's ‘Family Ties.’” Chasqui, vol. 20, no. 1, 1991, pp. 34–42. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/29740322. Accessed 26 July 2020.