Reading Notes W14: The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman, Part B

Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian modernist, she entered law school and became the first women reporter at the major newspaper A Noite. She is known for her fictional short stories.

In the story of "The Daydreams of a Drunken Woman" the character, Maria, seems to be in and out of a conscience state or a drunken state. The story opens with her staring/self-consumed with herself, despite the trolley shaking the room and something heavy and hollow fell to the ground: "Her eyes did not take themselves off her image….” (809).
She is struggling with her identity, …. And her open dressing gown revealed in the mirror the intersected breasts of several women” (809).
She is also irritated, angry, and full of self-pity. She is also depressed, sleeping throughout the day and “she did not want to eat any dinner nor to abandon her dreams, and “she went back to sleep: let him content himself with the leftover for lunch” (810). Instead of seeing herself as a mother and a wife who works hard and need the rest while her husband is gone away on business and children are visiting with their aunt, she sees herself as fat and lazy. She is agitated with her husband as he attempts to give her a kiss her goodbye, maybe because she is envy of the fact he gets to travel on business. He has the freedom to come and go as he please. She lost her temper “Go to hell! prowling round me like some old tomcat” (810). Her husband calls her ills and she seems to be flattered by it. “She accepted him remark, surprised, and vaguely flattered” (810).
She continues to weave in and out of her inner thought pattern with sudden outburst. She sees herself as a lazy bitch. She continues to drink and put her self down.
She goes to dinner and continues to get drunk. She tries to preserve herself however, she is drunk. In her drunkenness she speaks of how disapproval of the woman at the restaurant. It is obvious that is jealous of the woman’s tiny figure seeing that she constantly complained about being fat.

She is a woman who is clearly feels stuck in being a wife and mother.