Resumen
This article analyzes the representation of a violent mother in the poetry book Historia de la leche (2019) by Mónica Ojeda, using the Virgin Mary and Eve as contrasting Christian references. It argues that the feminine is marked both by the guilt inherited from Eve and by an impossible ideal of motherhood, modeled after Mary. By disrupting traditional ideals and their components, the characters find themselves in a state of abjection. Milk, a symbol of sacrificial motherhood, is transformed into a poisonous element that transmits anger and guilt. The womb, a paradoxical space, is a source of life and decomposition simultaneously, thus revealing a monstrous and harmful maternal figure. To unravel this maternal figure, various symbols present in the poem are analyzed: milk, the jaw, colors, and biblical and classical references. The poetic voice relates in an abject and paradoxical way to her sister, in a dynamic of inherited violence that ultimately arises from the love between women. Both sisters are fractured characters, products of symbolic violence, who find in emancipatory poetry a means of liberation from guilt. Through death, in a meta-literary act, the writing of the poem emerges, where poetic language is presented as the limit of the symbolic world and the only tool capable of breaking the process of signifying violence.
Título traducido de la contribución | Femininity’s legacy through milk: guilt, anger, abjection, and poetry in Mónica Ojeda’s Historia de la leche |
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Idioma original | Español |
Páginas (desde-hasta) | 302-316 |
Número de páginas | 15 |
Publicación | Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies |
Volumen | 49 |
N.º | 3 |
DOI | |
Estado | Publicada - 2024 |
Nota bibliográfica
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Palabras clave
- Eva
- María
- Mónica Ojeda
- abjection
- crime
- femininity
- maternity
- poetry