... conveys both Susana San Juan's etherealness and her corporeality. And her lips, which are glowing in Pedro's vision, are metonyms suggesting her sexual relationship with Florencio, now ended by his death. The madness that manifests itself in her final delirium of sexually explicit gestures calls to mind such literary madwoman as Ophelia, Charlotte BrontÎ's Bertha Rochester, and Robert Musil's Clarisse. In ... the price of her defiance, she is now even more stigmatized. However, what Susana San Juan shows in this scene is not madness, but contempt towards a hypocritical Church. Her moth...

• Word Count: 3381
• Approx Pages: 14
• Has Bibliography