Text Explorations: The Smallest Woman in the World

Passage 1:

Marcel Pretre has just discovered a little black pygmy woman in the forest.

“For a second, in the drone₁ of the jungle heat, it was as if the Frenchman had unexpectedly arrived at the end of the line₁. Certainly, it was only because he was sane that he managed to keep his head and not lose control₂. Sensing a sudden need to restore order₂, and to give a name to what exists₃, he called her Little Flower. And, in order to be able to classify her among the identifiable realities₃, he immediately began to gather data about her.”

            -(Lispector 89)

He proceeds to name her Little Flower; we then get more description on and information about Little Flower’s species.

I chose this passage because it’s kind of awfully beautiful, terrible, strange, yet fascinating. I think it shows something really important about Marcel Pretre, that might reflect on the entire Western society’s ideals and beliefs.

1.     Although this is written in 3^rd person, all the details of the event are still somehow pretty reflective on Marcel Pretre’s point of view of the situation in the beginning. So we get these descriptive phrases and words that all have pretty negative intonations: the first, drone, defined by the OED as “to proceed in a sluggish, lazy or indolent manner.” It’s as if Pretre is entering a foreign situation and announcing how difficult it is for him to be there; completely dissing the jungle and everything in it by proclaiming it to be drone-like. Furthermore, he says he’s “arrived at the end of the line:” What line? The line of difficulty? After all, he’s an explorer–what “line” has he reached the end of? Is the jungle just so terrible, is the tiny woman just too strange for him that he can’t handle its?

2.     And then, when he says it’s “only because he was sane that he managed to... not lose control,” it’s like he’s announcing the solution to a problem that he invented. There was no problem before he came to the jungle. The Likoualas were living peacefully by themselves and managing life on their own, and then this random guy comes in and says, oh no, this is so terrible, but because I am smart and I am an amazing explorer, I’m special because I can deal with it because that’s just how skilled I am. !!??!?!?! Furthermore: “sensing a need to restore order,” to restore order of what? THERE IS NO PROBLEM. HE’S THE ONLY ONE WHO’S INVENTING SOME PROBLEM THAT’S REALLY NOT EVEN THERE.

3.     “To give a name to what exists.” “To classify her among the identifiable realities.” Wow. This clearly shows how much we Westerners feel the need to label every single thing we come upon. We cannot let things be, alone in nature, undisturbed–we have to “classify” everything. Westerners are so ignorant and harsh towards anybody that’s not like themselves. This is evident all throughout history, with prejudices towards Jews, Blacks, immigrants, even women. Anyone who is not not like us immediately becomes an animal, an “other.” They are not people, people who have hearts, brains, feelings. They are “others;” they don’t count. So Lispector uses the character of Marcel Pretre as a representation of this culture that is so afraid of losing their own power that they have learned to dislike and be discriminatory towards anyone that is different then them.

4.     Lispector is also using this passage to make a point about how exploration and discovery is often done with our head versus our heart, with data versus emotional instincts. She is making an exaggerated statement about discovery and categorization by showing how Pretre managed and controlled the situation with intellect versus feeling–which I guess isn’t completely negative, as fact is the basis of science, but Lispector’s definitely trying to make this way of classifying clear.

Passage 2:

Mother just recalls a story her cook once told her about her time as an orphan. The mother then feels embarrassed about her child and what he said before.

“She obstinately₁ dressed up her toothless child in fancy clothes, and obstinately insisted upon keeping him clean and tidy, as if cleanliness might give emphasis to a tranquilizing superficiality, obstinately perfecting the polite aspect of beauty₂. Obstinately removing herself, and removing him from something which must be as “black as a monkey.”₃ Then, looking into the bathroom mirror, the mother smiled, intentionally refined and polished, placing between that face of hers of abstract lines and the raw face of Little Flower, the insuperable distance of a millennia."

            -(Lispector 92)

Lispector goes on to describe people in other houses and their reactions to the article/picture.

I chose this passage because what the mother is doing seems so superficial and stupid, even, and I want to explore more about her intentions and the reasoning behind all this.

1.     Lispector repeats obstinately 4 times in 2 sentences. According to the OED, obstinate is defined as “inflexible, resolute, and stubborn.”

2.     “Polite aspect of beauty.” Is this what beauty she really have to be? Polite? Isn’t beauty something that should be personal and boundless and lovely and mosty definitely not a “superficiality?” Yet, “polite” tones down all these loose aspects of beauty. It ties them down to make them serve the purpose of “pleasing.” “Polite” turns beauty around into something that is done for somebody else as oppose to your own self content. That is another fear of the Western culture: the fear of how others perceive you. Beauty has lost all it’s abtract, personal delicacy and has become completely about the self image. So all people want is control. Control of themselves, control of others, control of how other see them. This mother thinks that she can change her son into a better person by changing how he is on the outside, as if that will magically transform his sensitivity on the inside. Actually, she claims that what’s on the inside doesn’t matter because nobody can see it. And the only thing that matters is what others can see. So instead of outright making all these claims, Lispector uses the characters in her story to relay them and make them seem more agreeable and sensible.

3.     This lady is also reiterating this line/label that we’ve already seen in the story: the idea that the white, explorer, scientist man is good and correct and better than the little “black as a monkey” ignorant lady who is someone we want to “remove” ourselves from. Of course, this is very exaggerated–what person is ever so adamant about how much they don’t want to look like a black person? Who even thinks that? Who’s so open about that? So Lispector intentionally heightens the beliefs of her characters to make these feelings–that are often very subtle in the real world–to make them more clear.

4.     Also, just in general, the fact that Marcel Pretre has to make such a big deal about this little women by taking a picture of her, printing it in “full color,” and writing an article about her in the newspaper shows how habitual and conquering Westerner’s often are: they label all foreigners as savages, non-believing, filthy. They’re not able to leave nature amongst itself.

Passage 3:

            Little Flower loves Marcel Pretre, but because she also loves his boots, Pretre would be disappointed.

“In the humidity of the jungle, there do not exist these cruel refinements₁; love is not to be devoured, love is to find boots pretty₂, love is to...”
            -(Lispector 94-95)

            Discusses love, and what that means to Little Flower in particular.

I chose this passage because I want to see Lispector uses this idea of love to bring out the differences between Marcel Pretre and Little Flower.

1.     For the first time, Lispector acknowledges a lot of the ideas she previously explored as “cruel refinements:” this is the first concrete opinion we get from her.

2.     To Marcel Pretre, to love innocently and without an objective is a foreign idea. For Little flower, there’s no hieracrchy of love: loving something else doesn’t diminish the love of another something. But to Pretre, to Westerners, love is competitive. It must serve a purpose, have a concrete value. Just like the women who tries to superficially fix her son–she’s trying so hard instead of letting go and just feeling; she’s trying so fard to appear as something, to have a purpose, instead of just letting herself be and not labeling others as bad in order to make herself feel better.