The novel The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector was published by Francisco Alves Editora, 17th edition, from which the quotes used in the analysis were extracted.
Rodrigo S.M., an omniscient narrator, tells the story of Macabéa, the protagonist character, who came from Alagoas to Rio de Janeiro, where she lived with four other roommates, besides working as a typist (a very bad one, by the way).
Macabéa is an ordinary woman, whom no one would notice, or rather, whom anyone would despise: frail body, sickly, ugly, poor hygiene habits. Furthermore, she was an easy target for advertising and cultural industry (to exemplify, her greatest desire was to be like Marilyn Monroe, the sex symbol of the time). Our character does not know who she is, which makes her incapable of asserting herself in front of anyone.
She starts dating Olímpico de Jesus, an ambitious Northeasterner, who sees no chance of social advancement in her. Thus, he abandons her to be with Glória, Macabéa's co-worker; after all, her father was a butcher, which suggested the possibility of financial improvement.
Sad, our character seeks solace in a fortune teller, who predicts that she would finally be happy... happiness would come from abroad.
In a way, that's what happens: as she leaves the fortune teller's house, Macabéa is run over by Hans, who was driving a luxurious Mercedes-Benz. This is her "hour of the star", a moment of liberation for someone who, after all, "lived in a city made entirely against her."
"As long as I have questions and there are no answers, I will continue to write. (...) Thinking is an act. Feeling is a fact."
There is a constant need to discover the beginning, but man, limited as he is, does not know the answer to all questions. The narrator character is no different from other men, however, even without knowing these answers, she is sure of one thing and, therefore, she states: "Everything in the world began with a yes." One must say yes for something to begin, therefore, she says "yes" to Macabéa. Someone who forced her birth, her emergence from within the narrator, becoming the Northeastern woman, the protagonist of her novel.
It is the narrator's cry that appears in Macabéa's body: "But the person I will speak ill of has no body to sell, no one wants her, she is a virgin and harmless, she is not missed by anyone. In fact - I discover now - I am not missed at all, and what I write, someone else would write. Another writer, yes, but it would have to be a man because a female writer can cry sentimental tears."
Thus, she is one among many, for who would look at someone with a "decayed body", frail, dirty clothes, ovaries incapable of reproduction? The narrator identifies with her, because she herself has done nothing special (anyone would write what she writes); she would have to be a writer, but never a female writer; on the other hand, one cannot forget that the one writing is Clarice Lispector, as stated in the dedication.
In this way, in the first part of the book, an entire process of metalanguage is unleashed, which will interweave the narrative until its conclusion. The male narrator - Rodrigo S. M. - will reflect on the position the writer occupies in society, his role before it, and, especially, on the process of elaborating the writing of his work:
"I am writing at this moment with preemptive modesty for invading you with such an exterior and explicit narrative. From where, however, even blood panting with such vibrant life, could perhaps flow and coagulate into cubes of trembling jelly. Will this story one day be my clot?
What do I know. If there is truth in it - and of course the story is true although invented - let each one recognize themselves in it because we are all one and whoever does not have poverty of money has poverty of spirit or longing for lacking something more precious than gold - there are those who lack the delicate essential.
I intend for what I will write not to be complex, although I am forced to use the words that sustain you. The story - I determine with false free will - will have about seven characters and I am one of the most important of them, of course. I, Rodrigo S. M. An old tale, this one, as I do not want to be trendy and invent fads by way of originality. Thus, I will experiment against my habits with a story with a beginning, middle, and 'gran finale' followed by silence and falling rain."
Ironically, repeatedly, the desire readers have for traditional narratives, Clarice Lispector (here transfigured into the narrator Rodrigo S. M.), in contrast, does not let go of her most striking characteristics, namely, reflection, the element above the plot, the "silence and falling rain," which will mark the protagonist character.
How to tell life without lying about it? For this, the narrator ponders, the narrative must be simple, without art. The narrator is tired of literature. He will not use "succulent terms," "splendid adjectives," "fleshy nouns," verbs "slender that pierce the air sharply in acts of action." Language must be stripped down to be precise and to reach the entire, living body of reality.
How does the narrator write? "I notice that I write by ear, just as I learned English and French by ear. My antecedents in writing? I am a man who has more money than those who are starving, which in a way makes me dishonest. (...) What else? Yes, I
have no social class, being marginalized. The upper class sees me as a bizarre monster, the middle class with suspicion that I might upset them, the lower class never comes to me."
We arrive here at the most important point of this metalanguage work: the writer's consciousness as a marginalized person. This is where the narrator merges with his character: both are marginalized, in a space that does not accept them. This fusion occurs on all levels - not
only in the desire for simplicity of stripped-down language; to be able to talk about Macabéa, the writer becomes a manual laborer, makes himself poor, sleeps little, develops deep, dark circles under his eyes, lets his beard grow, dealing with a character who insists, at nineteen
years old, despite having a "decayed body," compared to a "stray bitch," "in a city made entirely against her," on living. Thus, character and narrator give their cry of resistance in search of life.
Macabéa's resistance can be represented, for example, in moments when she smiles on the street at people who don't even see her; the narrator's resistance, in the search for the word, full of secret meanings... the "thing" that, when it doesn't exist, must be invented (the writer narrator as the master of creation).
Both Macabéa and the word are rough stones to be worked. The word will be the mediator between the narrator and the reader, and between the reader and Macabéa, because it is through it that we will know the character's story, the facts, and, above all, their birth. The narrator, by telling Macabéa, tells himself, not only through successive identifications with the character, but because she emerges from within him, immanent to him ("because the typist does not want to leave my shoulders.").
From this union, a Northeastern woman from Alagoas to Rio de Janeiro is born. A typist, "which gave her some dignity," making her believe that such a profession indicated that she "was someone in life" (here, it doesn't occur to her that she is a terrible professional, semi-illiterate... she has no awareness of any of this).
Someone with a rough appearance, capable of disgusting her four roommates (at the boarding house where she lived), workers at Lojas Americanas:
"... she slept in a cotton nightgown, with rather suspicious stains of pale blood (...) She slept with her mouth open because of her stuffy nose.
She was born with a bad inheritance and now looked like a child of who-knows-what, with an air of apologizing for taking up space. In the mirror, she distractedly examined the spots on her face. In Alagoas, they called them 'freckles,' they said they came from the liver. She disguised the freckles with a thick
layer of white powder, and if she looked a bit pale, it was better than being dusky. She was all a bit grimy because she rarely washed. By day she wore a skirt and blouse, at night she slept in a nightgown. A roommate didn't know how to tell her that her smell was musty. And since she didn't know, she let it be, for she was afraid of offending her. Nothing about her was iridescent, although the skin of her face between the spots had a slight opal sheen. But it didn't matter. No one looked at her on the street, she was cold coffee.
She blew her nose on the hem of her nightgown. She didn't have that delicate thing called charm. Only I see her as charming. Only I, her author, love her. I suffer for her."
Her lack of physical perception is accompanied by psychological lack. It begins with the fact that she is an easy target for consumer society and cultural industry: she likes to collect advertisements; her meager knowledge is drawn from Rádio Relógio (information heard, but never understood); she likes hot dogs and Coca-Cola. She accepts all this without question, as she fears the conclusions she might reach (she repents in Christ for everything, even not understanding what it means; she did not take revenge because she was told it is an "infernal thing"; she falls in love with the unknown, as in the case of the word "ephemeris," but she never truly sought to know the unknowable, because it was easier to accept its existence and admire it from afar).
Consequently, she becomes a "bent" character, from trying so hard to fit into an environment that rejects her so much. The very use of typist is revealing: she was one because she believed it gave her some dignity. She sought dignity, as if she had no right to it. Another revealing fact is her relationship with Olímpico, constantly apologizing to him, even telling him that she is not much of a person, that she only knows how to be impossible. She does not defend herself by her own values but tries to adapt to her boyfriend's values, never questioning their validity.
Olímpico represents the counterpoint to Macabéa. His values have nothing to do with hers: a metallurgist, he wants to be a congressman, to distance himself from Macabéa and be with Glória, the bleached blonde, Macabéa's co-worker; after all, her father was a butcher, which gave him
greater life prospects.
And all this is literally swallowed, so thoroughly digested, that she does not admit the idea of vomiting; after all, that would be a waste.
At the same time, she is sensual in her thoughts, or in moments of solitude, such as when she saw the handsome man at the bar, or when she stayed home - instead of going to work - experiencing the sensation of freedom. Pleasure in Macabéa is something that is always allied with pain. Upon seeing the
man, for example, despite the pleasure such a sight gives her, there is suffering for not possessing him and for being certain that someone like that is only meant to be seen. Macabéa had already experienced these contradictory sensations with another person, her aunt, who, when hitting the girl, felt pleasure in seeing her suffer: "... and she was only herself," immune to life, a life that was death, due to so much acceptance.
The instinct for life, which is linked to pleasure, sustains her. The narrator says: "I think about Macabéa's sex (...) her sex was the only vehement mark of her existence."
And further on, linking pleasure to death: "She could do nothing but her sex demanded, like a newborn sunflower in a tomb."
What kind of "sexual relation" can be spoken of in Macabéa's case? The relation with life itself, which she insists on maintaining, in her very particular concept of beauty: she wore red lipstick, wanted to be a movie actress like Marilyn Monroe, appreciated noises, as they were life.
These sensations intensify when she goes to the fortune teller Carlota (on Glória's recommendation), at which point she reveals: happiness would come from outside, from abroad. The fortune teller shows her the tragedy that is her life (something she had not realized until then), but, at the same time, gives her the hope to believe that things could be different... possible happiness.
When she leaves the fortune teller's house, she is run over by Hans, who was driving a Mercedes-Benz car, at which moment life becomes "a punch in the stomach":
"For now, Macabéa was nothing more than a vague feeling on the dirty cobblestones. (...)
She was so alive that she moved slowly and settled her body into a fetal position. Grotesque as she had always been. That reluctance to yield, but that desire for the great embrace. She hugged herself with a longing for sweet nothingness. She was a damn wretch and didn't know it. (...)"
Her death is the moment when Eros (Love) unites with Thanatos (Death), life and death, in a sweet, sensual moment:
"Then - lying there - she had a supreme, moist happiness, for she was born for the embrace of death. (...) And there was a certain sensuality in the way she had curled up. Or is it that pre-death resembles intense sensual longing? It is that her face resembled a grimace of desire. (...)
If she were to die, in death she would pass from virgin to woman. No, it was not death, for I do not want it for the girl: only a car accident that did not even signify a disaster. Her effort to live seemed like something she had never experienced, a virgin as she was, at least she had intuited it, for only now
did she understand that a woman is born a woman from the first cry. A woman's destiny is to be a woman. She intuited the almost painful and effervescent moment of love's swoon. Yes, a painful reflowering so difficult that she put her body and the other thing you call
soul into it. (...)
At this exact moment, Macabéa feels a deep stomach nausea and almost vomits, she wants to vomit what is not body, to vomit something luminous. A star of a thousand points.
What am I seeing now and what scares me? I see that she vomited a bit of blood, a vast spasm, finally the core touching the core: victory!"
Her mouth, now red like Marilyn Monroe's, in the orgasmic peak of death, screams, for the first time, after vomiting, to life:
"And then - then the sudden, gurgling cry of a seagull, suddenly the voracious eagle lifting the tender lamb to the high heavens, the soft cat tearing apart a dirty, random rat, life eats life."
We finally arrive at the moment of the narrator's epiphany merged with Macabéa: it is life that screams for itself, independent of social oppression and marginalization. The moment, interspersed with silence, of awareness reached through the act of writing:
"(...) The instant is that split second when the car tire running at high speed touches the ground and then doesn't touch anymore and then touches again. Etc., etc., etc. In essence, she was nothing more than a slightly out-of-tune music box.
I ask you:
- What is the weight of light?
And now - now all that's left for me is to light a cigarette and go home. My God, only now did I remember that we die. But - me too?!
Don't forget that for now it's strawberry season.
Yes."
Finally, we discover now that everything begins and ends with a yes. Courage is also needed
to die, silence to hear the cry of life.
The novel The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector was published by Francisco Alves Editora, 17th edition, from which the quotes used in the analysis were extracted.
Rodrigo S.M., an omniscient narrator, tells the story of Macabéa, the protagonist character, who came from Alagoas to Rio de Janeiro, where she lived with four other roommates, besides working as a typist (a very bad one, by the way).
Macabéa is an ordinary woman, whom no one would notice, or rather, whom anyone would despise: frail body, sickly, ugly, poor hygiene habits. Furthermore, she was an easy target for advertising and cultural industry (to exemplify, her greatest desire was to be like Marilyn Monroe, the sex symbol of the time). Our character does not know who she is, which makes her incapable of asserting herself in front of anyone.
She starts dating Olímpico de Jesus, an ambitious Northeasterner, who sees no chance of social advancement in her. Thus, he abandons her to be with Glória, Macabéa's co-worker; after all, her father was a butcher, which suggested the possibility of financial improvement.
Sad, our character seeks solace in a fortune teller, who predicts that she would finally be happy... happiness would come from abroad.
In a way, that's what happens: as she leaves the fortune teller's house, Macabéa is run over by Hans, who was driving a luxurious Mercedes-Benz. This is her "hour of the star", a moment of liberation for someone who, after all, "lived in a city made entirely against her."
"As long as I have questions and there are no answers, I will continue to write. (...) Thinking is an act. Feeling is a fact."
There is a constant need to discover the beginning, but man, limited as he is, does not know the answer to all questions. The narrator character is no different from other men, however, even without knowing these answers, she is sure of one thing and, therefore, she states: "Everything in the world began with a yes." One must say yes for something to begin, therefore, she says "yes" to Macabéa. Someone who forced her birth, her emergence from within the narrator, becoming the Northeastern woman, the protagonist of her novel.
It is the narrator's cry that appears in Macabéa's body: "But the person I will speak ill of has no body to sell, no one wants her, she is a virgin and harmless, she is not missed by anyone. In fact - I discover now - I am not missed at all, and what I write, someone else would write. Another writer, yes, but it would have to be a man because a female writer can cry sentimental tears."
Thus, she is one among many, for who would look at someone with a "decayed body", frail, dirty clothes, ovaries incapable of reproduction? The narrator identifies with her, because she herself has done nothing special (anyone would write what she writes); she would have to be a writer, but never a female writer; on the other hand, one cannot forget that the one writing is Clarice Lispector, as stated in the dedication.
In this way, in the first part of the book, an entire process of metalanguage is unleashed, which will interweave the narrative until its conclusion. The male narrator - Rodrigo S. M. - will reflect on the position the writer occupies in society, his role before it, and, especially, on the process of elaborating the writing of his work:
"I am writing at this moment with preemptive modesty for invading you with such an exterior and explicit narrative. From where, however, even blood panting with such vibrant life, could perhaps flow and coagulate into cubes of trembling jelly. Will this story one day be my clot?
What do I know. If there is truth in it - and of course the story is true although invented - let each one recognize themselves in it because we are all one and whoever does not have poverty of money has poverty of spirit or longing for lacking something more precious than gold - there are those who lack the delicate essential.
I intend for what I will write not to be complex, although I am forced to use the words that sustain you. The story - I determine with false free will - will have about seven characters and I am one of the most important of them, of course. I, Rodrigo S. M. An old tale, this one, as I do not want to be trendy and invent fads by way of originality. Thus, I will experiment against my habits with a story with a beginning, middle, and 'gran finale' followed by silence and falling rain."
Ironically, repeatedly, the desire readers have for traditional narratives, Clarice Lispector (here transfigured into the narrator Rodrigo S. M.), in contrast, does not let go of her most striking characteristics, namely, reflection, the element above the plot, the "silence and falling rain," which will mark the protagonist character.
How to tell life without lying about it? For this, the narrator ponders, the narrative must be simple, without art. The narrator is tired of literature. He will not use "succulent terms," "splendid adjectives," "fleshy nouns," verbs "slender that pierce the air sharply in acts of action." Language must be stripped down to be precise and to reach the entire, living body of reality.
How does the narrator write? "I notice that I write by ear, just as I learned English and French by ear. My antecedents in writing? I am a man who has more money than those who are starving, which in a way makes me dishonest. (...) What else? Yes, I
have no social class, being marginalized. The upper class sees me as a bizarre monster, the middle class with suspicion that I might upset them, the lower class never comes to me."
We arrive here at the most important point of this metalanguage work: the writer's consciousness as a marginalized person. This is where the narrator merges with his character: both are marginalized, in a space that does not accept them. This fusion occurs on all levels - not
only in the desire for simplicity of stripped-down language; to be able to talk about Macabéa, the writer becomes a manual laborer, makes himself poor, sleeps little, develops deep, dark circles under his eyes, lets his beard grow, dealing with a character who insists, at nineteen
years old, despite having a "decayed body," compared to a "stray bitch," "in a city made entirely against her," on living. Thus, character and narrator give their cry of resistance in search of life.
Macabéa's resistance can be represented, for example, in moments when she smiles on the street at people who don't even see her; the narrator's resistance, in the search for the word, full of secret meanings... the "thing" that, when it doesn't exist, must be invented (the writer narrator as the master of creation).
Both Macabéa and the word are rough stones to be worked. The word will be the mediator between the narrator and the reader, and between the reader and Macabéa, because it is through it that we will know the character's story, the facts, and, above all, their birth. The narrator, by telling Macabéa, tells himself, not only through successive identifications with the character, but because she emerges from within him, immanent to him ("because the typist does not want to leave my shoulders.").
From this union, a Northeastern woman from Alagoas to Rio de Janeiro is born. A typist, "which gave her some dignity," making her believe that such a profession indicated that she "was someone in life" (here, it doesn't occur to her that she is a terrible professional, semi-illiterate... she has no awareness of any of this).
Someone with a rough appearance, capable of disgusting her four roommates (at the boarding house where she lived), workers at Lojas Americanas:
"... she slept in a cotton nightgown, with rather suspicious stains of pale blood (...) She slept with her mouth open because of her stuffy nose.
She was born with a bad inheritance and now looked like a child of who-knows-what, with an air of apologizing for taking up space. In the mirror, she distractedly examined the spots on her face. In Alagoas, they called them 'freckles,' they said they came from the liver. She disguised the freckles with a thick
layer of white powder, and if she looked a bit pale, it was better than being dusky. She was all a bit grimy because she rarely washed. By day she wore a skirt and blouse, at night she slept in a nightgown. A roommate didn't know how to tell her that her smell was musty. And since she didn't know, she let it be, for she was afraid of offending her. Nothing about her was iridescent, although the skin of her face between the spots had a slight opal sheen. But it didn't matter. No one looked at her on the street, she was cold coffee.
She blew her nose on the hem of her nightgown. She didn't have that delicate thing called charm. Only I see her as charming. Only I, her author, love her. I suffer for her."
Her lack of physical perception is accompanied by psychological lack. It begins with the fact that she is an easy target for consumer society and cultural industry: she likes to collect advertisements; her meager knowledge is drawn from Rádio Relógio (information heard, but never understood); she likes hot dogs and Coca-Cola. She accepts all this without question, as she fears the conclusions she might reach (she repents in Christ for everything, even not understanding what it means; she did not take revenge because she was told it is an "infernal thing"; she falls in love with the unknown, as in the case of the word "ephemeris," but she never truly sought to know the unknowable, because it was easier to accept its existence and admire it from afar).
Consequently, she becomes a "bent" character, from trying so hard to fit into an environment that rejects her so much. The very use of typist is revealing: she was one because she believed it gave her some dignity. She sought dignity, as if she had no right to it. Another revealing fact is her relationship with Olímpico, constantly apologizing to him, even telling him that she is not much of a person, that she only knows how to be impossible. She does not defend herself by her own values but tries to adapt to her boyfriend's values, never questioning their validity.
Olímpico represents the counterpoint to Macabéa. His values have nothing to do with hers: a metallurgist, he wants to be a congressman, to distance himself from Macabéa and be with Glória, the bleached blonde, Macabéa's co-worker; after all, her father was a butcher, which gave him
greater life prospects.
And all this is literally swallowed, so thoroughly digested, that she does not admit the idea of vomiting; after all, that would be a waste.
At the same time, she is sensual in her thoughts, or in moments of solitude, such as when she saw the handsome man at the bar, or when she stayed home - instead of going to work - experiencing the sensation of freedom. Pleasure in Macabéa is something that is always allied with pain. Upon seeing the
man, for example, despite the pleasure such a sight gives her, there is suffering for not possessing him and for being certain that someone like that is only meant to be seen. Macabéa had already experienced these contradictory sensations with another person, her aunt, who, when hitting the girl, felt pleasure in seeing her suffer: "... and she was only herself," immune to life, a life that was death, due to so much acceptance.
The instinct for life, which is linked to pleasure, sustains her. The narrator says: "I think about Macabéa's sex (...) her sex was the only vehement mark of her existence."
And further on, linking pleasure to death: "She could do nothing but her sex demanded, like a newborn sunflower in a tomb."
What kind of "sexual relation" can be spoken of in Macabéa's case? The relation with life itself, which she insists on maintaining, in her very particular concept of beauty: she wore red lipstick, wanted to be a movie actress like Marilyn Monroe, appreciated noises, as they were life.
These sensations intensify when she goes to the fortune teller Carlota (on Glória's recommendation), at which point she reveals: happiness would come from outside, from abroad. The fortune teller shows her the tragedy that is her life (something she had not realized until then), but, at the same time, gives her the hope to believe that things could be different... possible happiness.
When she leaves the fortune teller's house, she is run over by Hans, who was driving a Mercedes-Benz car, at which moment life becomes "a punch in the stomach":
"For now, Macabéa was nothing more than a vague feeling on the dirty cobblestones. (...)
She was so alive that she moved slowly and settled her body into a fetal position. Grotesque as she had always been. That reluctance to yield, but that desire for the great embrace. She hugged herself with a longing for sweet nothingness. She was a damn wretch and didn't know it. (...)"
Her death is the moment when Eros (Love) unites with Thanatos (Death), life and death, in a sweet, sensual moment:
"Then - lying there - she had a supreme, moist happiness, for she was born for the embrace of death. (...) And there was a certain sensuality in the way she had curled up. Or is it that pre-death resembles intense sensual longing? It is that her face resembled a grimace of desire. (...)
If she were to die, in death she would pass from virgin to woman. No, it was not death, for I do not want it for the girl: only a car accident that did not even signify a disaster. Her effort to live seemed like something she had never experienced, a virgin as she was, at least she had intuited it, for only now
did she understand that a woman is born a woman from the first cry. A woman's destiny is to be a woman. She intuited the almost painful and effervescent moment of love's swoon. Yes, a painful reflowering so difficult that she put her body and the other thing you call
soul into it. (...)
At this exact moment, Macabéa feels a deep stomach nausea and almost vomits, she wants to vomit what is not body, to vomit something luminous. A star of a thousand points.
What am I seeing now and what scares me? I see that she vomited a bit of blood, a vast spasm, finally the core touching the core: victory!"
Her mouth, now red like Marilyn Monroe's, in the orgasmic peak of death, screams, for the first time, after vomiting, to life:
"And then - then the sudden, gurgling cry of a seagull, suddenly the voracious eagle lifting the tender lamb to the high heavens, the soft cat tearing apart a dirty, random rat, life eats life."
We finally arrive at the moment of the narrator's epiphany merged with Macabéa: it is life that screams for itself, independent of social oppression and marginalization. The moment, interspersed with silence, of awareness reached through the act of writing:
"(...) The instant is that split second when the car tire running at high speed touches the ground and then doesn't touch anymore and then touches again. Etc., etc., etc. In essence, she was nothing more than a slightly out-of-tune music box.
I ask you:
- What is the weight of light?
And now - now all that's left for me is to light a cigarette and go home. My God, only now did I remember that we die. But - me too?!
Don't forget that for now it's strawberry season.
Yes."
Finally, we discover now that everything begins and ends with a yes. Courage is also needed
to die, silence to hear the cry of life.
