Comparative Latin American Fiction

by Jeremy Got | 15-minute read

The predominant tensions present in Silvina Ocampo’s Mimoso (Ocampo, 1988, pp. 105-109) and The Velvet Dress (Ocampo, 1988, pp. 144-147) centres around tensions of gender and class relations particularly regarding women’s position in a male-dominated and patriarchal society, and the way in which the freedom of the fantastic genre allows for an exploration and examination of these social and class dynamics in Ocampo’s short stories which mirrors the similar struggles and tensions that exists in our real world setting.

The theme of the subversion of traditional femininity and of the masculinisation of the female figure serves as the core feminist message of Silvina Ocampo’s short story Mimoso. As Virginia Woolf once articulated that ‘Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer.’ (Woolf, 2009, p. 106) that ‘[h]ad [she] not killed [the angel] she would have killed [her] (Woolf, 2009, p. 106). Mercedes’ position as a woman in a male-dominated society becomes apparent as the taxidermist comments that ‘[Mimoso the dead dog is] not as plump as his owner’ (Ocampo, 1988, pp. 106) in which he subsequently ‘looks up and down [of her]’ (pp. 106) and comments that ‘[w]hen [she Mercedes sees] him, he’ll be good enough to eat (pp. 106). 

A clear distinction in gender dynamics is established early in the short story in which the taxidermist, a worker of the public, capitalist industry within a male-dominated space imposes his male gaze on Mercedes and reduces her to the physical female body in relation to a male-dominated space within a capitalist market economy. As the taxidermist, a figure that represents the oppressive, patriarchal order imposing his male gaze on Mercedes’ body, he too reduces Mimoso’ dead corpse into a mere object of commodity and capital within a commercial space of the market economy. As he commented, ‘[w]hen you see him, he’ll be good enough to eat.’ (pp. 106) suggests a transition of the ownership and possession of Mimoso as a pet figure that is part of the family to that of physical consumption of flesh, in which a masculinist discourse overrules that of the feminine, a power exchange between the taxidermist and Mercedes. 

Moreover, there is the presentation of the oppressive suffocation of gender and class expectations that is present in both short stories, wherein ‘Mrs. Cornelia Catalpina’ (Ocampo, 1988, pp. 144) told Casilda and the narrator to ‘[t]ake it off, I’m suffocating’ (pp. 145) and that ‘[i]t’s a prison’ (pp. 147) referring to the velvet dress. As social gender expectations are also present in Mimoso as ‘the lady on the third floor… understood the perversity of a world in which a woman couldn’t have her dog embalmed without people thinking her crazy’ (Ocampo, 1988, pp, 108). As both of these social tensions are predicated upon the gendered assumptions that women’s bodies are only of value as commodities for the pleasure of male desire and presented as a sexualised object for the satisfaction of the male gaze, in which personal safety of the female subject is to be disregarded. Furthermore, the second example is a subtle critique of the societal misogynistic association between female identity and madness and their lack of emotional stability and control, which in turn requires male guidance and supervision to continue on with everyday life in society. 

Yet the core feminist message of Mimoso centres around the subversion of traditional femininity and of the masculinisation of the female figure which is more apparent towards the end of the short story. As Mercedes serves Mimoso’s corpse as dog meat to ‘the perverse man… who sends these anonymous letters’ (Ocampo, 1988, pp, 109) of ‘[e]vil talk’ (pp. 108), in which a subtle psychological transformation takes places as Mercedes slowly adopt the masculinist mode of being which is hinted at in her comment ‘[y]ou should never say ‘dog eat dog’’ (pp. 109) hinting at the pornography vendor’s impending doom, as Mercedes adopts the masculinist mode of competition and survival, which results in the death of the pornography vendor. As Marcia Espinoza-Vera articulates in her article Unsubordinated Women: Modernist Fantasies of Liberation in Silvina Ocampo’s Short Stories (Espinoza-Vera, 2009) that ‘the stories of feminine metamorphosis [physical or psychological] in Ocampo show fantasies of escape from the social order and from the symbolic order, actions that attempt to challenge the established order’ (Espinoza-Vera, 2009, pp. 226). As the pornograhy vendor uses women’s bodies as commodities of the masculinist market economy for the fulfillment of male desire and of the male gaze, Mercedes’ murder of him through the poisonous embalming of Mimoso’s corpse, symbolises the castration of the capitalist, and masculine gendered patriarchy, and of her psychological metamorphosis to the masculinist mode as she weaponises the very object in which the taxidermist reduced into a mere object of the capitalist, market economy early on in the short story.  

The Velvet Dress, on the other hand is a piece of penetrating social critique on the destructive confluence of class and gender relations within a male-dominated society. This complex formulation could be best understood and investigated by the intersectional theoretical framework. Ocampo’s use of the figure of the dragon as a symbol of the ruling and upper classes establishes the clear class dynamic of the oppressor and the oppressed, in which ‘Mrs. Cornelia Catalpina’s bedroom’ (Ocampo, 1988, pp. 144) evokes a sense of wealth, power and status where it is described as ‘completely red, with white drapes and mirrors in golden frames’ (Ocampo, 1988, pp. 144), where the dragon is understandably an apt image and symbol of the wealthy and powerful ruling class. Yet this black-and-white perspective on class relations is brought into question as the dimension of gender comes into the fold. 

The intersectional theoretical framework corresponds much with the concept of kyriarchy, another theoretical concept at the fore of contemporary, feminist discourse. “The term kyriarchy is defined as ‘a system of “ruling and oppression” in which many people may interact and act as oppressor or oppressed.’ (kyriarchy, Your Dictionary)” (Got, 2020, pp. 5/9). As the majestic imagery of the dragon is evident in how ‘[t]he dress was beautiful and complex! A dragon embroidered with black sequins was shining on the left side of the gown’ (Ocampo, 1988, pp. 146) and the lush imagery of wealth and luxury of a bedroom ‘completely red, with white drapes and mirrors in golden frames’ (pp. 144), stands in stark contrast to the real, physical suffocation and entrapment experienced by ‘Mrs. Cornelia Catalpina’ (pp. 144), the dragon. As she says to Casilda and the narrator ‘“Take it off, I’m suffocating,”’ (pp. 145) and that when ‘she [Mrs. Cornelia Catalpina] had finished talking the lady [Mrs. Cornelia Catalpina] was breathing with difficulty. The dragon also’ (pp. 146). 

This sense of suffocation, entrapment and literal shortness of breath is redolent of the fatal nineteenth-century European culture of women’s corsets and of the many fatalities that are supposedly related to the adornment of corsets, which is particularly rampant in Victorian Britain. Hence, these two contrasting images of the dragon which is associated with power, wealth, status and freedom and that of the velvet dress which evokes haunting memories of the fatal corset fashion culture, serves as a satirical paradox of upper-class women that belongs to the ruling class, and of the suffocating class constraints in which they suffer, and of their voicelessness as a member of the ruling elite in spite of their supposedly higher degree of power and freedom in society compared to those of the working class, or the oppressed as one may say within the Marxist realm of discourse. 

As we near the end of both short stories, the primary antagonists seem to be dealt with poetic justice within these two Ocampian feminist narratives. However, the complex and multilayered nature of especially the short story of The Velvet Dress resists a simple verdict. Under the kyriarchal and intersectional lens of analysis, ‘Mrs. Cornelia Catalpina’ (pp. 144) the dragon becomes an unlikely contender of victim under a classist, patriarchal system. As we the readers witness ‘Mrs. Cornelia Catalpina’s’ (pp. 144) and the dragon’s dying moments, Ocampo arouses a surprising sense of compassion and sympathy in the readers for the dying creature. As ‘the dragon trembling with each beat of her heart’ (pp. 147) and utters the words that “[v]elvet is wonderful but it’s very heavy.” (pp. 147) and ‘wiping her brow’ (pp. 147) she articulates that ‘[i]t’s a prison. How to escape it?’ (pp. 147) and her dying words and wish were that ‘[t]hey should make dresses of fabric as immaterial as air, light, or water”’ (pp. 147). 

Therefore, in the end the death of the ‘Mrs. Cornelia Catalpina’ (pp. 144) and the dragon is as much of a triumph as it is a tragedy in the fight against a male-dominated, classist, patriarchal society, in which all the female subjects across the class spectrum is subjugated to the prevailing patriarchal order that governs society, which further illustrates and rejects a simple understanding of gender and class relations in our contemporary society through these two remarkable short stories written by the critically incisive Silvina Ocampo!

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