Essay on Drunk Woman's Daydreams: Maria's Inner Struggle With Society's Expectations

Clarice Lispector's The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman is a short narration about Maria's struggles with society's expectations, with her life and her struggle with herself. Clarice Lispector is popularly known to be a writer of tightly structured and intense narrations which portray the real external world through the innermost feelings and thoughts of the characters. Lispector is a special contributor to modernism because of her special ability to make connections between language limits, bodily sensations, and the mysteries of existence Even though Maria's upheaval is dramatized, she represented the characteristics of women in 1960s a period in which women were fighting to have gender equality and had challenges reconciling different notions. Maria feels unhappy and imprisoned by her marriage, but according to the view of society, marriage is meant to make a woman happy. Maria is already married as per the expectations of the society, but she considers her marriage to be the source of her distress and thinks of it to be more of enslavement than it is a blessing. She complains about her children and husband and opposes the expectations they put on her as a wife and a mother .Lispector is known for her lyrical writing style that blurs the line between poetry and prose. The lyricism aspect is significant because of the subject matter she engages in the narrative. Her narrations are mainly interior monologues that question the psychic reality of the characters. Conflict, as seen in this narrative, is constantly within the mind of Maria as she explores new events, things, and other people in the real world. Maria's psychic perspective is continually changing, and this dominates both the structure and style of the story as the focus of the author engages in the effects of situations Maria faces rather than the conditions themselves. Lyricism in this story is found in the sentence structure and rhythm of the author's sentence structure. Lyricism is also found in the way the actual words used by the author move seamlessly between the other real of the world and the real world. This is shown in the nature of Maria who flows between social quotidian, the practical and to the dreamlike self-inner reality. One must relate to language for it to have a meaning, and Lister manages to seamlessly transform the nonlinear inner reality of her character retain the essence by using a linear expression.

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Marquez's style of writing reveals his desire to use unreal and real elements in his narrative seamlessly. He masterfully uses the plot, symbols, and themes to relate fantasy and the reality which people adapt to with daily changes in circumstances. In this story, Marquez uses different elements as symbols. For instance, the butterfly, the name of the town, and the rose are symbolic objects in the story. The rose is a universal love symbol in many cultures from all over the world. In this story, the senator does not feel any real love from the wife since he is love with Laura. The rose is red, and this is a symbol of the blood, which will be shed as the narrative progresses. The name of the village, Rosal del Virrey, is symbolic since the town was so morally degraded and Senator Sanchez wore unlively that even this name is a joke since the only rose in the village. This rose worn by the senator is symbolic of the beauty and love and the promise and growth he tells the people, but he brings nothing he promises which proves his campaigns are empty and can be compared to a desert town. The senator caries lusts in his heart and does not have any love towards anyone, and he is expecting his apparent death and not the youthful bloom symbolized by a rose .

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was one of the most popular Latin novelists in the 1960s and 1970s. In his works, he integrates a mixture of actuality called "magic realism" and fantasy. Magic realism is a fictional genre which incorporates magical elements into a realistic setting or plot. In her story, Death Constant beyond Love, the author effectively connects with the readers using Magical realism. The first element of magical realism in the narrative is by no surprise the author's use of the theme of death. Senator Sanchez is the protagonist in this narration, and he will be dead in a period of "Six months and eleven days" . The senator decides to live if he does not suffer from a terminal condition. Therefore, all the themes in this narrative connect to the approaching death of the senator and his ridiculous decision to ignore his call of death. The author shows the campaign of the senator to be surreal and magical. The campaign does not have any real substance since the senator is dying anyway; however, his crusade continually alludes to his constituency.

The senator eventually dies, and the simple reality of death and poverty of the village people win over the senator's corruption and lies. The setting of the narrative suggests the political situation in Latin America at the time which the author mocks in this narrative; the empty promises that politicians made during their campaigns, which were never realized. The author uses magical realism to point the reality about politics and disclose the different issues which faced their society at the time.