The Melancholy of a Married Woman

In Clarice Lispector’s “The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman,” a woman’s mental struggle which sterns from being in an unhappy marriage is revealed through the revelation of the world in her mind. The woman in Lispector’s tale seemed to enjoy neither her familial life nor her role as a wife and a mother; when her children went to stay with their aunts, she lied in bed all day and night ignoring the household chores at home (Lispector 1556). Her interaction with her husband suggests that she didn’t marry him for love, and that narrator’s description of her thought confirmed that: “She was still in bed, peaceful and casual. She was in love…. She was anticipating her love from the man whom she would love one day” (Lispector 1556). To her, her marriage and her duties as a wife and a mother kept her trapped like a prisoner. Thus, she resorted to alcohol which allowed her mind to temporarily escape.

Lispector portrays in her tale a woman who enters into marriage with a man she doesn’t love for various possible reasons: “Oblique details and brilliant imagery suggest other dimensions to her life: the reasons for her misery and repressed rage, the choice that she has made while seeking security and protection, and the social conditions that foster such pitiable circumstances” (Simon 1555). Her reaction to the painting on the wall in the restaurant revealed her passion for art and suggested that she was deprived of the freedom to pursue goals that would bring her happiness: “When she gazed upon that picture which was so beautifully painted in the restaurant, she was immediately overcome by an artistic sensibility. No one would get it out of her head that she had really been born for greater things. She had always been one for works of art” (Lispector 1558). Her angry comment about the woman she saw in the restaurant serves perhaps as a reflection of herself before her marriage: “Bet you anything that she isn’t even married for all that pious look on her face … and that fine hat stuck on her head. A fat lot of good her hypocrisy would do her, and she had better watch out in case her airs and graces proved her undoing! The more sanctimonious they were, the bigger frauds they turned out to be” (Lispector 1558). Lispector’s tale reflects that marriage and family are not the only things that make women happy as expected in a patriarchal society.

Works Cited

Lispector, Clarice. “The Daydream of a Drunk Woman.” Trans. Giovanni Pontiero. 1650 to the Present. Ed. Peter Simon. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1555-60. Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Martin Puchner, gen. ed. 2 vols.

Simon, Peter, ed. 1650 to the Present. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Martin Puchner, gen. ed. 2 vols.