Proposal & Explorations for Essay: The Smallest Woman in the World

(Tentative status quo): I’m interested in writing about the ideas of what makes a story a story. We’ve all been taught–whether through school or just through the assumptions of our culture–that a story needs a plot, a climax, a single character that goes on an intense journey of self realization; it needs a conflict, a resolution. All of these characteristics are what make a story a story: what makes it so intriguing. (Beginning of trouble): However, The Smallest Women in the World lacks many of these seemingly vital elements–it has absolutely no set plot or climax; it jumps around between multiple perspectives; it has an unclear conflict that never fully gets resolved, per se; it’s a complete retell of events, something that we’re always told not to do in a writing class. Additionally, it isn’t a set genre; it is fairly realistic, yet it revolves around the idea of an unrealistically tiny women.

(Tentative trouble): And yet, it’s still captivating. When I read this story, I was so fascinated and interested, almost appreciating and enjoying the author’s unique style. This makes me want to understand how Lispector manages to maintain the intrigue that readers have with her story despite the fact that it omits so many of these traditional “requirements” of a story. Additionally, I want to explore why she chose to take this route; what she hopes to accomplish with her story by doing something so unique and different.

(Tentative claim- this needs a lot of work and much more thinking): One way to consider this is...

(No particular order yet):

Chunk 1: ...to think about how her characters serve as possibly the most important part of the story, particularly those in all the scenes of different people reacting to the discovery of Little Flower. By providing us with (“pre-made?”) meta reactions to the main “event” of story within the story itself, Lispector suspends our own personal reaction and opinion to the event. It serves as almost a series of mirrors with reflections of ourselves, the readers. However, we don’t recognize ourselves in these reactions because they seem so weird, unusual, strange, completely foreign but they actually reveal more about ourselves then we think.

Chunk 2: ...to see how Lispector is able to do things in her story that couldn’t quite be done in a traditional story.

Chunk 3: ...to notice that this is a story more for the reader than for the author: a story for our “benefit” rather than the author’s pure enjoyment and pleasure of writing a story and creating a fictional world. It gets us to think about certain issues in ways we often don’t. By defamiliarizing the context of certain issues such as sexism, slavery, and racism, it makes us readers more open to listening to what the text has to say because we aren’t instantly comparing ourselves to the characters in the story: because all of their reactions seem like reactions we readers would never have. However, after thinking about it and taking a step back, we realize that the rash reactions of the characters within the story aren’t all that different from our own (chunk 1 & 3 are similar).

Chunk 4: Maybe the format and style of a story doesn’t matter: maybe that’s not what’s really important. At heart, this story actually does serve the function of what most stories essentially do–relay themes, messages, lessons, provide arguments, and raise awareness to certain issues. The Smallest Women in the World does do this, and in a very interesting, idiosyncratic way.