Exploratory Draft: The Smallest Woman in the World

Exploratory Writing: Extra Notes & Draft
(Sidenote– this is super messy and random writing, and may only really make sense to me. My ideas will clear up in the formula.)

Notes on the story:

-the smallest woman in the world is a story all about perspective, and how many perspectives we constantly have around us that are always influencing our own perspective, and what the truth is, what it means, and how that shifts from perspective to perspective.

-society’s constant labeling of everybody and everything

**Her characters are so strange!

-Marcel Pretre, explorer, initial main character.

-“to give a name to what exists.” “classify her among the identifiable realities.”

- smallest pygmies: “the need that Nature sometimes feel s to surpass herself.”

- Little Flower, the tiny black pregnant pigmy lady; one of the Likoualas spe;cies.

- the “savage Bantus-“ they hunt the Likoualas.

-“not even the teachings of the Indian Sages are so rare”- The Great Seven Sages of India:

“When Lord Brahma decided to create our universe, he created seven sages out of his thoughts they were called as Saptha Rishi or Manasa Putra (created out of mental thoughts).

They completely dedicated themselves to the pursuit of inner bless & divine light. They are known as "seers" as they are said to possess perfect knowledge about the past, present & future of humanity.”

http://www.jeevanadi.com/seven-sages-of-india.php

-“At that moment, Little Flower scratched herself where one never scratches oneself. The explorer–as if he were receiving the highest prize of chastity to which man, always so full of ideals, dare aspire–the explorer who has so much experience of life, turned away his eyes.”

Reactions to picture of Little Flower in the newspaper”

*Take note: none of these people are named -> goes to show it doesn’t matter who says it, it just matters that it was said.

#1 – Woman says, “it distresses me.”

#2 – Woman feels such a “perverse tenderness for the daintiness of the African woman,” that “Little Flower should never be left alone with the tenderness of that woman. Who knows to what darkness of love her affection might extend.”

#3 – A little girl had always been the tiniest person her family had ever known, but now she’s not, because of Little Flower: **Even in the most ridiculous circumstances, we are always looking for the benefit of ourselves!

#4 – Consecration: “association with the sacred.” Young girl feels empathy for the “sad look” on Little Flower’s face, but mother dismisses it’s significance by saying it’s the sadness of an animal, not a human.

#5 – A little boy thinks it would be fun to put Little Flower in his brother’s bed while he’s sleeping to make scared when he wakes up. His Mother has a strange reaction–she reminisces about a story of when her cook was an orphan, the orphan girls hid a dead girl in the cupboard and played with her without telling the nun what happened–because they had “maternal feelings” just as every girl does (!!) and needed means of expressing them, as they didn’t have dolls to care for, which was the normal way (!!) to express those feelings. Mother then has an inner thought process about love and happiness.

-       nun’s perspectives

#6 – A family tries to measure the size of Little Flower/ “Each member of the family there arose the gnawing desire to possess that minute and indomitable thing for himself.”

*** “...felt in its heart–perhaps also lack, because one can no longer have confidence in a Nature that had already blundered (“to make a stupid or careless mistake”) once...”

-“Like the secret of its own secret.”

- The “ineffable (to great to be expressed in words) sensation of not have been devoured yet.”

*** Little Flower, in a strange way, is an example of the purity and innocence that we so rarely see anymore, except maybe in children.

-And when smiles, the explorer cannot “classify it.”

****THAT”S WHY HE’S AN EXPLORER–to show how we always label, to show our need for constant classification; we can never just let anything be, we have to label it, define it.

-“But in the humidity of the jungle, there do not exist these cruel refinements.”

-“Love is not to be devoured, love is to find boots pretty, love is to like the strange color of a man who is not black, love is to smile out of love at a ring that shines.”

**Lispector does make a lot of assumptions– but maybe they’re on purpose; she’s probably hyper aware of every writing move she makes.

Exploratory Draft:

I’m interested in the idea of a story, what a story means, how we define a story, and what typically makes up a story. We’ve all been taught–by our reading and writing classes all throughout our schooling, and simply by the general assumptions of our society–that if a piece of writing is classified as a story, it means it has a plot line, a climax; an intricate conflict, a touching resolution; a single character that goes on a powerful journey of self realization; clear cut themes, messages, lessons, morals that benefit the greater good of society; a story must be a certain genre, whether it’s realistic fiction, nonfiction, or fantasy. These are all the elements that attract so many people to reading stories. They’re what keeps readers interested and on the edge of their seats, eager to read on.

However, the Smallest Woman in the World, a short story by Clarice Lispector, lacks many of these traditional requirements. The story has no clearly defined plot or climax. It takes place over a very short period of time, and constantly jumps around between so many different perspectives. It has no evident conflict, let alone a resolution. Yet, it keeps readers on their toes; it keeps readers fascinated, compelled, intrigued. It makes us question and wonder. So how is it that, while omitting so many of the conventional literary forms, structures, and elements of the standard short story, Lispector still manages to take readers on an enjoyable, excited journey, just like most stories try so hard to do? Furthermore, why would Lispector chose to divert her form from the norm and write with such a unique, different style? What does she accomplish by doing this? What is the purpose of her story?

I have two main chunks to my tentative claim, but I’m not yet sure how to connect them.

The first is about how the Lispector’s quirky writing style affects the reader’s experience with the story, and how that in turn influences their interpretations of its themes and main ideas:

Just like most stories, the Smallest Woman in the World definitely explores many themes, relays many messages, and is and makes many arguments.

We, as readers, read the story, observe these themes, and interpret them for ourselves.

That’s what we do with all stories. With all writing. For everything we consume, actually. We see, we observe, we interpret. That thought process stays the same for everything we will ever be approached with.

However, that thought process is greatly influenced by how information is presented to us. One can argue whatever they want–the content stays the same–but the form, how one argues, is the most important part. My parents always used to tell me, “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” It’s just form and function; form being the how and function being the what.

Clarise Lispector touches upon many traditional themes in her story, like ideas of racism, sexism. And she could have simply written a story that deals with these issues in a much simpler way.

I think of authors as game designers. They have the power to do absolutely whatever they want; they create the word, they bring the characters to life; they decide how they’ll present the stories. So Lispector, as the one in control, decided to take a cutting-edge approach and make her story really unusual, strange, weird, unfamiliar, and often illogical.

But maybe it’s not just because she felt like making it weird. Plus, she’s hyperaware of what she’s doing. Maybe her bizarre style effects what we get out of the story. Maybe she’s intentionally making her writing so quirky in order to accomplish something that could not be done in a normal, ordinary way.

How?

-       It initially seems super unrelatable. All the events of the story revolve around an unrealistically tiny woman, for starters. Secondly, all the reactions that the different people have to seeing Little Flower’s picture in the papers seem insanely uncanny and disturbingly perplexing. But by making these reactions seem like ones we readers would never have, it makes us remove ourselves from the situation, which is something we rarely do (**as human beings, we’re often doing things for solely our own benefit. When we are in any situation we always, even if it’s subconsciously, compare ourselves to the alternate, and try to make our own personal situation seem better than theirs to make ourselves feel better. However, this comparison only comes when there’s some sort of basis of similarity. So by making the character’s reactions seem so unlike ours, we remove ourselves from comparison and just read the story).

We then go on to read the story free of comparison, which actually allows us to be more open and questioning. Although we still judge, we’re more at peace with the strangeness that we’re judging because we think it has nothing to do with ourselves.

But the story is so confusing and weird that we read it a second time, in hopes of gaining a better understanding. And then, when we take a step back, we notice some familiar themes. We begin to see ourselves in some of these characters. And we’re horrified. We realize certain things about our society in a new light.

This “journey” only happens the way it does because of the unusual style of the story.

**The experience has something to do with how we react and interpret the messages and claims of the story itself.

The second part of my “claim” more answers the question of what the purpose of the story really is.

Maybe the style of the story isn’t actually important. I think the purpose of the story may have to do with a big theme. So maybe the story isn’t so different from most other stories: it has a theme, which is arguably the most important part of any piece of writing (sidenote–as a writer myself, I do find it really annoying when people–especially a lot of English teachers– are all like, “every story has a purpose. The author did everything intentionally!” because this really isn’t always true. However, I do believe that all writing does have a theme, even if that theme is simply the pleasure that the author takes in writing something.)

*she actually deals with a much more complicated issue that really covers all the other issues.

I think that the central theme has to do with the idea of perspective. From Marcel Pretre the explorer, to Little Flower, to the families in their apartments, the story is full of different perspectives (perspective is defined as “a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view”).

Our personal interpretations of and reactions to the story are suspended as we read about other people’s reactions–these people being characters in the story itself. Lispector pulls a really interesting literary move here–she has some sort of meta, inception-like reaction chain going on (I don’t know if that makes any sense?), which greatly effects how we interpret the story for ourselves.

So the story is all about how perspective is so subjective and influential: influential by others, by sterotypes, by pressures, by society. The whole beginning of the story, which is when we are introduced to Little Flower, is in the point of view of Marcel Pretre. All the descriptions we get of Little Flower in the beginning are coming from him.

Then, Marcel writes an article about Little Flower and takes a picture of her, and it’s published in the newspaper. So then everyone who reads the newspaper is only learning about Little Flower through the filter of Marcel (it’s interesting to note here that we readers are in the same boat as these families reading the newspaper: we aren’t provided the primary information–the “truth,” per se– about Little Flower, so our assumptions on the event aren’t really on the event itself, but on Marcel’s interpretation of the event).

We also see the themes of stereotyping and labeling. The idea of what it means to love is briefly explored at the end of the story, when Lispector announces Little Flower’s genuine love for Marcel Pretre, yet because her love extends not just towards him but to his boots, as well, Marcel Pretre will have a negative reaction to this. Because his culture–which is essentially our culture–has taught him all these superficial meanings about love, and how it has to be romantic and cannot just be a genuine, friendship, “brotherly” sort of love. So his actions are influenced by he his feelings which are influenced by his opinions which are influenced by the society he lives in, which often promote exaggerated, unfair, stereotypical ideas.

(also, this example is completely influenced by the norms and “rules” of society: -“At that moment, Little Flower scratched herself where one never scratches oneself. The explorer–as if he were receiving the highest prize of chastity to which man, always so full of ideals, dare aspire–the explorer who has so much experience of life, turned away his eyes.”)

So the Smallest Woman in the World is all about how distant we all are from the truth, and how truth may have to be redefinied because it may not even exist. When we live in a world with billions of other people, how can we not be influenced by them? So maybe truth is just subjective and personal and there isn’t one truth but many truths, as many as there are people in this world because every person has there own personal truth.

AH!

-Marcel Pretre and Little Flower foil each other; she’s so innocent, while he’s very uptight and lives by the social norms.