Trampas De Género: Disrupting Gender in the Novels Of

Abstract The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how Mexican author Cristina Rivera Garza (Matamoros, 1964) critiques gender in her novels. In an era of prolific publications dealing with gender, Rivera Garza’s work stands out for its fresh critique of how socially gendered modes of behavior are “written” into the social code. I argue that she exposes latent and explicit gender prejudices and then literally and metaphorically rewrites gender expectations. Central to her objective is to quash binary divisions (masculine/feminine, male/female, privileged/marginalized) to create a space for nuanced, complex characters in her novels. Rivera Garza employs the metaphor of writing to weaken these gendered divisions and in doing so, she destabilizes the division between literary genres. My first chapter focuses on Nadie me verá llorar (1999) and how Matilda, the young, mestiza protagonist, endures the many (and at times oppositional) labels society imposes on a young woman. It is through her own self-imposed isolation at the infamous La Castañeda asylum that she finds the freedom to articulate her own identity. In my chapter dealing with La cresta de Ilión (2002), I discuss how biological sex shapes identity and how Rivera Garza presents a sex as a spectrum rather than just a male/female dichotomy. Multiple characters named “Amparo Dávila” challenge the notion of authenticity while also bringing attention to this talented female voice deserving of a permanent spot in the Mexican literary cannon. In the final chapter, I address how La muerte me da (2007) reimagines the detective genre by inverting the male and female roles that are typical in this genre. An overwhelming number of inter-artistic references, with special attention paid to Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, blur the divisions between visual art, the written word, and the subgenres of these two categories. Instead of cracking the case, this detective novel evolves from prose to poetry and never identifies a definite murderer. I argue that Rivera Garza is advocating not for a new type of detective fiction, but for an innovative way of writing that allows authors to blend, mix, and create original writing that does not reproduce inequitable gendered norms. © Copyright by Caroline Leigh Good, 2014 All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the unfaltering support of many individuals. I would first like to acknowledge my director, Professor Idelber Avelar. I sincerely thank you for your time, your patience, and your guidance. I am extremely grateful for your support and I feel privileged to have been both a student in your classes as well as an advisee. I also would like to thank Professor Maureen Shea and Professor Antonio Gómez for their enormous efforts in helping me with this project. It was a pleasure to work with such a brilliant committee and I consider myself quite fortunate to have been their student. I extend my thanks to Tulane University for the opportunity to work with these superlative professors and for giving me the chance to grow as a student and as an instructor. I thank Shaun Bauer and Brandon Bisbey for their guidance and friendship along the way. I am extremely grateful to my parents, Ilona and James Thomson, for their support and encouragement and for instilling in me the joy of reading. Finally, I thank my husband, Jeffrey Good, whose support and encouragement gave me the flexibility to finish. I dedicate this project to my son, Benjamin Leidner Good, with the hope that he will also share in my love of literature. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………ii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1…………………………………………………………………………………13 Battling Gendered Archetypes and Resisting Interpretation in Nadie Me Verá Llorar Chapter 2…………………………………………………………………………………71 Gender Disorientation in La cresta de Ilión Chapter 3………………………………….…………………………………………… 135 El género repensado : New approaches to gender/genre in La muerte me da Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………… 193 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….197 iii 1 “No creo que ninguna identidad del género sea estable, fija, inamovible…el género es sobre todo un performance que varía y se enacta de acuerdo a negociaciones específicas en contextos específicos” Cristina Rivera Garza “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” Roland Barthes Introduction This dissertation, titled Trampas de género: Disrupting Gender in the Novels of Cristina Rivera Garza , examines three novels by celebrated Mexican author Cristina Rivera Garza. These novels, Nadie me verá llorar (1999), La cresta de Ilión (2002), and La muerte me da (2007), engage in a poignant critique of socially-constructed gender roles. Each novel offers a distinctive angle in Rivera Garza’s endeavor to invalidate a binary understanding of male and female identities. The first novel vilifies socially imposed structures, the second examines how said structures are internalized individually, and the third exposes these structures by inverting them. A parallel study of language builds across these novels beginning with how names construct identity, the power of writing to create new realities and culminating in the appropriation of certain literature genres. Rivera Garza’s postmodern writing breaks with the norms of a traditional narrative writing style, opting instead for fluid, unnamed protagonists and uncertain realities. The author’s tendency to provoke anxiety in her reader through her ambiguous texts is precisely her intention: to rouse the reader’s consciousness of 2 restrictive gender behavior while drawing attention to language’s ability to shape new realities. Before going into further detail about how gender and genre are treated in these novels, it is worth pausing a moment to contextualize this accomplished author. Cristina Rivera Garza (b. 1964) was born in the northeast Mexican border city of Tamaulipas, Matamoros. At 15 years of age, she moved with her family to Mexico City where she would stay through her undergraduate education. Rivera Garza received her master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Houston in Latin American History. Her dissertation was a detailed investigation of the insane asylum La Castañeda in early 20 th century Mexico and her findings serve as the historical backdrop for Nadie me verá llorar . She taught at various American universities until 2000, when she received the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. That same year, she received Mexico’s Juan Ruben Award for best manuscript and the following year won her first Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz prize for Nadie me verá llorar . She also earned the prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz prize for La cresta de Ilión (Samuelson 14-15). Enthusiasm for Rivera Garza’s writing has exploded in the past decade as an international audience sought out her texts translated into English, Italian, Portuguese, German, and Korean. Mexican intellectual Carlos Fuentes once characterized her as one of the most original voices of “our” literature (cited in Palaversich 101). Currently, Rivera Garza teaches at the University of California San Diego and splits her time between Mexico and the United States. 3 Rivera Garza’s writing encompasses various modes (novels, short- stories, prose, essays, blogs, and criticism) and in keeping with her aversion for rigid categories, often blends these styles. Much of her work centers on liminal spaces, both physically and psychologically as well as biologically. Identity markers, such as sane/insane, masculine/feminine, and male/female, become fluid so to allow for a reinterpretation of their implications. Contained in her examination of these traits is a careful study of the language used to define individuals. In Nadie me verá llorar , the main character, Matilda, adopts a series of different nicknames as she progresses through different stages in her life. At times the nicknames are self-proclaimed and at times the other characters impose them. The process of assigning meaning via monikers is part of a larger motif of language’s power to change realities that is present across Cristina Rivera Garza’s writing. In her next novel, La cresta de Ilión , the central character is living in an ambiguous location, between the loosely-named cities La Ciudad del Norte and La Ciudad del Sur. Like Matilda in Nadie , it is not clear if this unnamed protagonist is sane. The texts present both characters as living on the brink of mental stability. Adding additional volatility to the protagonist in La cresta is confusion with respect to his biological sex. He is confirmed both as a male and a female at different points in the narration. This uncertainty begins when another character labels him as a woman demonstrating yet again the transformative power of language. While it is never definite—few things are in Rivera Garza’s texts—if the protagonist undergoes a physical transformation or if he hysterically rejected his true, female identity, the evolution from a 4 male identity to a female identity raises questions of privilege and belonging. The final novel examined in this dissertation, La muerte me da , is so heavy with intertextual references that Rivera Garza’s authorial presence fades into the tumult of many different artists of many different backgrounds, including Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, Montenegrin performance artist Marina Abramovi ć, British conceptual artists Jake and Dinos Chapman, Spanish romantic painter Francisco de Goya, among others. The result is that not the obliteration of Rivera Garza’s voice, but the sense that La muerte is a collaborative project across art forms, nations, and centuries. Through this interpretation, art no longer must be either written or visual, it may be both. As exemplified in this text, a novel can belong to many different movements and be tied to many different artists. La muerte pays particular attention to the division between poetry and prose, a binary that so obsessed Alejandra Pizarnik.

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