Nymphomaniac, Blind and Mute: Disease and Writing in the Literature of Margarita Aguirre, María Elena Gertner, and Elisa Serrana

Abstract

Writings by women produced in Chile as presented by authoresses belonging to the so-called generation of 1950, is filled with disease-related tapies. The present paper explores the hypothesis that such images of pathology might fit the model of hysteria, in spite of a diversity of previous diagnoses, bringing femininity and disease to concur. In Aguirre's Cuaderno de una muchacha muda (Diary of a mute girl), Gertner's
La mujer de sal (The woman of salt), and En blanco y negro (In white and black) by Serrana, writing propases an interplay between inflections and inversions based on the image of hysteria resulting from a masculine view that sustains patriarchal power.