Resistance of the secret and the woman as a question

Abstract

In the first decades of the twentieth century, when first-wave feminism was confronted by medical discourses that tended to display the supposed natural inferiority of the woman, psychoanalysis appeared as a science and practice which, together with seeking to make women speak through therapy, was also prone to placing them in the realm of the enigma and the indecipherable. Seemingly, many women writers would have attempted to unveil the secret of femininity by narrating the private lives of their protagonists. However, we can observe instead a kind of resistance to being analyzed based on the codes of science and classical myths, and offering in place of that a challenge to the very question of the secret of the woman. In particular, I propose reading “Las islas nuevas” by María Luisa Bombal as a text that enters into argument with the alleged interest of men in examining women, questioning the interpretation that they offer, their supposed desire to listen, the place of analysis in which women are poised, and the pretension of giving a solution to a question that is itself questionable.