Existence

Existence

Viewed through the lens of phenomenology as a psychoanalytical approach in twentieth-century literary criticism (Stevens, p. 245), Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector offers the reader an opportunity to examine what is going on in the mind of her character from a philosophical vantage point. In this story, the ontology of being plays into the daydreams of a woman who gets herself drunk to live in a fantastic world, more real to her than the actual world. In this hyperreality, the images of being blend seamlessly into one’s experience such that the dreamer is unable to distinguish “where one ends and the other begins” (Wikipedia). “The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman” is an experiment in modernism whereby the reality of being is questioned and another sphere of reality is presented through bodily and sense perceptions.

The story begins with Maria Quiteria looking at herself … “She was combing her hair at her leisure in front of the dressing table with its three mirrors… Her eyes did not look away as the mirrors trembled. … 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, p. 1555). Based on this sensory perception, what could she be asking herself? The probable questions might be: “Is this me? Who am I?”

Maria’s inner world then portrays different scenes where she is a free young woman as opposed to the real Maria, wife to a man she neither loves nor respects (Lispector, p. 1556), and mother to small children (p. 1555). “She clutched the bedsheet, inhaling its odor as she crushed its starched embroidery with her red-lacquered nails. Then, almost smiling, she started to fan herself once more. Oh my! – she sighed as she began to smile. She beheld the picture of her bright smile, the smile of a woman who was still young, and she continued to smile to herself, closing her eyes and fanning herself more vigorously. Oh my! – she would come fluttering from the street like a butterfly” (pp. 1555-6).

Then she is someone special who has attained a position in society. Unhappy with her real circumstances in life, Maria enters into a hyperreality where she is someone special and important. “But such sensibility! And not merely excited by the picture of grapes and pears and dead fish with shining scales. Her sensibility irritated her without pain, like a broken fingernail. And if she wanted, she could allow herself the luxury of becoming more sensitive, she should go further because she was protected by a situation, protected like everyone who had attained a position in life” (Lispector, p. 1558).

She also pictures herself as having been born to greatness, versus her humble beginnings, attested to by her marrying her husband whom she hated (1557), to escape poverty. “At the same time, she was conscious of such feelings! Such feelings! When she gazed upon that picture which was so beautifully painted in the restaurant, she was immediately overcome by an artistic sensibility. No one would get it out of her head that she had been born for greater things. She had always been one for works of art” (Lispector, pp. 1557-8).

In her inner world, she is superior to any other woman, who lives a hypocritical front in society. In the presence of this woman, she would ask the question, “Are you not ashamed of yourself, woman, pretending to be someone you are not?” At the restaurant where she and her husband were invited to dinner by someone, she sees a woman with a pretty hat and, once again, she begins her interior monologue which reveals her envy, despite her denial.“She didn’t even have any shape and she was flat-chested. And no doubt, for all her fine hats, she was nothing more than a fishwife trying to pass off herself as a duchess” (Lispector, pp. 1558-9). “Oh, how humiliated she felt at having come to the bar without a hat, and her head now felt bare. And that madam with her affectations, playing the refined lady! I know what you need, my beauty, you and your sallow boyfriend! And if you think I envy you with your flat chest, let me assure you that I don’t give a damn about you and your hats. Shameless sluts like you are only asking for a good hard slap on the face” (p. 1559). She might end her monologue with, “How come this woman has what is supposed to be mine?”

The author uses “interior monologues to evoke the immediacy of subjective consciousness” (Puchner, p. 1554) whereby the character is experiencing a sense of grandiosity that emphasizes her self-importance. Maria and her husband have been invited to a dinner at a nice restaurant by a businessman who is more well-off than they, afterward, she starts feeling that she is “becoming larger, … swollen, and gigantic. If only she could get closer to herself, she would find she was even larger” (Lispector, p. 1559). “When restored to her normal size, her anesthetized body would start to wake up, throbbing, and she would begin to pay for those big meals and drinks” (p. 1559). Then she wakes up to reality where “the objects in the room lined up in the order of words to form those confused and irksome phrases that he who knows how will read. Boredom … such awful boredom … How sickening!” Then she asks, “What has one to do? How can I describe this thing inside me” (p. 1559)?

Furthermore, in the world of her dreams, she is in love with the ideal man, not the man she married. She could be asking herself, “Am I really in love? What kind of a man would I fall in love with?” – questions that are futile because, in reality, she is already married, unfortunately to someone she hates. “She despised him beyond words” (p. 1557). “She was still in bed, peaceful and casual. She was in love … She was anticipating her love for the man whom she would love someday. Who knows, this sometimes happened, and without any guilt or injury for either partner. Lying in bed, thinking and thinking, and almost laughing as one does over some gossip. Thinking and thinking. About what? As if she knew. So she just stayed there” (pp. 1556-7).

Being always drunk, Maria neglects her domestic duties but feels no remorse about it. In this passage, “her husband appeared before her, having already dressed, and she did not even know what he had prepared for his breakfast. She avoided examining his suit to see whether it needed brushing … little did he care if this was the day for attending to his business in the city” (p. 1556). “She awoke late, the potatoes waiting to be peeled, the kids expected home that same evening from their visit to the country. God, ‘I’ve lost my self-respect, I have! My day for washing and darning socks …. What a lazy bitch you’ve turned out to be!’ she scolded herself, inquisitive and pleased … shopping to be done, fish to remember, already so late on a hectic sunny morning” (p. 1557). She might be questioning the universe why she has to do these “mundane” things that are beneath her. After all, she is made for greatness, isn’t she? What does she care about these people? Are they not supposed to serve her?

Finally, her questions as she lays in bed, point to that confused mental state wherein she cannot distinguish her true self from her fantasized self “while her husband is snoring at her side … her chubby little children sleeping in the other room, the little villains. Ah, what’s wrong with me? She wondered desperately. Have I eaten too much? Heavens above! What is wrong with me” (p. 1560)?

Maria epitomizes the modern woman, who, trapped in an unhappy traditional marriage, longs to escape into other horizons (Isbell). In today’s world, the sense of reality is eclipsed by the distorted and unreal images that we see in the media which we are bombarded with every single day. This hyperreality is sometimes blown into gigantic proportions that make people live in an unreal world. Just like in art, where the representation is more important than the represented, humans sometimes fail to distinguish fiction from reality. Like Maria Quiteria, we can be intoxicated into a fantasy world that somehow eases the pain of reality – even just for a moment or two.

Works Cited

Isbell, Rachel. “World Literature Presentation – Daydream of a Drunken Woman,” Troy

University. https://www.coursehero.com. Accessed 19 July 2023.

Lispector, Clarice. “The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman.” The Norton Anthology of World

Literature, translated by Giovanni Pontiero, edited by Michael Puchner et al., Shorter 3rd

ed., vol. 2, W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Puchner, Michael, et al., editors. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Shorter 3rd ed.,

vol. 2, W. W. Norton & Company, 2013, pp. 1555-60..

Stevens, Anne H. Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction. 2nd ed.,

Broadview Press, 2021.

Wikipedia. “Hyperreality.” https://www.en.m.wikipedia.org. Accessed 19 July 2023.