[In the following essay, Pennington focuses on the character of Mary to show that Buero Vallejo's La doble historia del doctor Valmy indicts patriarchal society in addition to political torture.]

Antonio Buero Vallejo's La doble historia del doctor Valmy (1964) brings to the stage the difficult issue of political torture. Daniel Barnes, the protagonist, works as a member of a security police force in the fictional country Surelia, and as part of his profession regularly utilizes physical torture as a means of obtaining confessions from his prisoners. He does not relish his work, however, and much of the action of the play charts his efforts to win permission to leave his employment. By focusing on the predicament of the torturer instead of the fate of the victim, the playwright prevents the play from slipping into melodrama, and the spectator from losing focus of its central issue: the global issue of torture itself and society's reactions to it.¹ The question, how potent a denunciation of torture the play sounds, can be answered partially by way of a review of the censorship problems the author experienced in having the play approved and performed.² Further confirmation of the work's forcefulness can be found in literary critics' evaluations of its caliber, and in the more than six hundred consecutive performances following its Spanish premiere.³ I suggest that La doble historia del doctor Valmy communicates more than an outcry against inhuman political practices, that it is not just the story of Daniel, but perhaps more a tale of his wife Mary. By observing the world in which she must move, as well as focusing on her character and behavior, one may interpret the drama as a resounding indictment of a savage, insensitive patriarchy, as stifling to women as to political prisoners.

The initial point of tension in the play occurs as Daniel discovers he can no longer perform sexually. His condition results from his involvement in emasculating a prisoner, Aníbal Marty. Though the problem resides in Daniel, his wife suffers equally, and naturally shares his desire for a solution. In this respect one could safely designate her a coprotagonist, as Doctor Valmy, in effect, does at one point in his narration.⁴ In an engaging article, Frank Dauster argues the existence of more than one protagonist should not be termed unusual and sides with Clifford Leech, who offers, “We have to recognize that the tragic burden can be shared.”⁵ Not only does Mary share her husband's tragic condition. In the end, her burden is heavier. She must learn the previously hidden truth about the nature of Daniel's profession and decide how to act upon this knowledge. Thus critics perceive in Mary more psychological change and certainly a rounder character than is the case with Daniel. González-Cobos Dávila views her as the best-drawn character of the play and the only one “que asume la verdad de una manera total y valiente, al afrontar los sufrimientos y decepciones que ello le pueda acarrear.”⁶ Iglesias Feijóo adds she “es la única que evoluciona ante la verdad” (p. 332). Doménech regards her as perhaps the most interesting character and, with the possible exception of the narrator, “el personaje a cuyo através el espectador puede—es invitado a—hacer la experiencia del problema trágico planteado.”⁷

In light of such comments it seems appropriate to examine the play from a feminine perspective, particularly Mary's. Such an approach reveals a woman dependent upon man for fulfillment, a victim of man's wars and torture machines, a person treated insignificantly, who must endure verbal humiliation and physical threats, while being limited in her creative expression. Mary's final destructive act of killing her husband then can be interpreted not so much as a move of desperation, but as one of liberation and hope. Her deed will be seen to symbolize not only a rebellion against what man (generic) does to man, but what man (specific) inflicts upon women.

If a reader, spectator, or critic approaches the drama sensitive to the feminine point of view, he or she rapidly concludes that the words, attitudes, and actions of the men of the play reflect disregard for the dignity of women. The female characters are treated either negatively and with condescension, or as simply inferior human beings. This attitude surfaces early in the play, as the spectator witnesses Daniel's patronizing remark to his wife, implying that her previous nervous problems were cured by marrying him: “A ti te alivió el matrimonio, pitusa” (p. 36). Daniel's conclusion is false, however, for Doctor Valmy clarifies that, despite her marriage, “En el fondo seguía siendo una persona nerviosa” (p. 29). We note that Mary's initial mental or emotional problems were not produced by the absence of man, but because war, man's doing, had taken her loved one from her: “Me habían matado a mi novio en la guerra” (p. 57). Rather than the cure, man is, then, the cause of Mary's problems. Only after she has irreversibly distanced herself emotionally from her husband, at the conclusion of the play, does Daniel realize that his wife, “Mi paciente, mi abnegada mujercita” (p. 109), has suffered at his hands rather than received a cure: “No he logrado enjugar aquellas lágrimas; todo ha sido una gran mentira” (p. 99).

Daniel's affection for Mary appears suspect when we scrutinize the curious description she gives of his first attraction to her: “Era muy afortunado con las mujeres; yo creo que se casó conmigo por compasión” (p. 58). One is not surprised to learn, then, that Daniel's concern for his sexual relations with his wife reached the point that he attempted sex with another woman in order to determine if their problem was specifically his: “Y me fui, tan confiado, con otra mujer que también me gustaba” (p. 42). While such regard for his marital relationship is not convincing, this passage subtly reveals the basic inequalities between man and woman. Daniel's account of this episode raises not the slightest rebuke or censure from Doctor Valmy for his patient, neither in his office consultation nor in his narrative commentary. There is nothing objectionable in that Daniel has another woman who “también me gustaba.”

Upon analyzing further Mary's relationship with Daniel one can determine that she suffers from the ingrained expectations of a patriarchal society: a woman should marry young and bear children or suffer subsequent humiliation for not having done so. When Lucila, one of Mary's former students and the wife of the imprisoned Marty, visits her teacher, Mary recounts her prior embarrassment at being an old maid while teaching school and marrying late in life: “es que a mí sí me dio vergüenza, Lucila. Ante vosotras … me creía una vieja” (p. 57). As she continues she reveals the pain and fear at being left alone, unmarried: “os veía y pensaba: ellas crecerán, se casarán … y yo seguiré siendo la señora maestra. Tú nunca sabrás lo que es eso, Trencitas …” (p. 57). It is possible to decipher from such words the power of socialization that prompts many women to feel they can only be fulfilled through marriage: “Women have internalized the norms prescribing marriage so completely that the role of wife seems the acceptable one. And since marriage is set up as the summum bonum of life for women, they interpret their marriage as happiness, no matter how unhappy the marriage itself may be.”⁸ Such an attitude or outward appearance is evident in Mary. Her unhappiness is denied, but seeps through her gushing description of her marriage to Daniel: “Tenemos nuestros problemillas, pero también pasarán” (p. 58). Doctor Valmy notices, as they chat some time after her marriage, that she is uncomfortable talking about her husband: “Él … siempre anda tan ocupado” (p. 29). Furthermore, he mentions how her promised invitation to dinner never arrived, raising the implication that their “problemillas” are more than Daniel's impotence, and that the term expresses a fundamental discomfort in the marriage.

To trace some of this marital friction, attention should be drawn to what Mary relinquished when she married: her teaching position, or in Simone de Beauvoir's term, “gainful employment.” In The Second Sex Beauvoir concludes that, in accepting the economic support of man, a woman remains “dependent, she lives through another, for child-breeding and domestic chores are not transcendent activities or projects but mere continuation of life.”⁹ To become an authentic human being, woman must work in the whole-hearted and total way that men do—for money, Beauvoir suggests. Mary eventually offers to return to teaching so that Daniel may quit his job outright but, in a significant revelation of his sexist stance, her husband refuses to address the issue and changes the subject of their conversation (p. 75). Additional irony in the imbalance between their creative or transcendent activities can be seen when we recall that, while Daniel writes articles for a magazine, likes to read, and admits, “Me gusta la cultura” (p. 43), he expresses incredulity that a book sent to their house could be for his wife (p. 71). Claude Levi-Strauss observes, “The invention of writing meant a new source of power in the development of patriarchy permitting men to exclude women,” and this exclusion is represented in this passage of Buero's play.¹⁰

Mary's dealings with her mother-in-law demonstrate another burden of women in traditional society. Daniel's mother lives with the couple, her jealousy scarcely veiled. A recent study on women in Spain provides an objective report of the factors which come into play in such situations:

The tension between a mother and her son's wife … centers on the son, and the right and responsibility to think out his daily needs and to meet them and extends from there to the organization of the lives of the other household members and of the house itself. A mother and her daughter-in-law are competing for the same niche. In effect, when a son marries, he brings his mother's replacement into the house, another woman who threatens to deprive the mother of part of herself.¹¹

This tension and competition for territory can be seen as Mary and the grandmother practically argue or debate over who is to change the diapers of the child (p. 31), prepare the biberón (p. 32), and fix the puchero (p. 32). Mary is good-natured about their relationship and recognizes the rivalry: “Le gustaría quedarse sola con su hijo y su nieto, ¿eh, abuela? Pero no te guardo rencor” (p. 32). But she speaks these words knowing that the near-deaf woman cannot hear, and she quietly explains to Daniel: “Está celosilla” (p. 34). The psychological burden is indeed great and volatile, the conflict between a mother and her son's wife being described by Harding as “one of the most serious confrontations that women experience in their lives,” and it is a by-product of marriage (p. 167).

Venturing outside Mary's relationship with Daniel, we see women treated more negatively by Daniel's co-workers. Rather than patronizing or superior attitudes, it becomes a more severe question of verbal abuse, ridicule, and ultimately physical torture. The first clear example appears as Marsán telephones inquiring about Daniel, and Mary, who has answered the phone, must endure the flirtatious remarks she hears (p. 37). Though such a scene might be interpreted as serving no other purpose than demonstrating the torpidity of Daniel's companions, it is pertinent to note that such ridicule and humor have been termed “the psychic counterpart of violence to blacks.”¹² Later, when Marsán stops by their house to investigate Daniel's absence, Mary is subjected to an extremely degrading instance of coquetry, dramatizing again the social disadvantage which she suffers because of the traditional restraints imposed on women's language:

Mary (fría): El caso es que yo iba a salir ahora mismo.

Marsán (se levanta): ¡Magnífico! ¿Me permite que la acompañe?

Mary (contrariada): ¿Cree que estaría bien?

Marsán (se acerca): ¿Por qué no? Yo no tengo prejuicios.

Mary: Yo sí.

Marsán: ¿Y … son muy fuertes, señora Barnes?

Mary: ¿Qué quiere decir?

Marsán (se acerca algo más): No puede imaginar cuánto me gustaría que no lo fuesen.

Mary (se aparta un paso): No le entiendo.

Marsán: Sí que me entiende. Me entiende desde la primera vez que vine a esta casa.

Mary: Señor Marsán, haga el favor de salir.

Marsán (le tiembla la voz): La vida ofrece pocas cosas agradables, Mary. No me diga que es feliz con su marido: eso nunca es cierto. (Avanza).

Mary (retrocede): ¡Salga!

Marsán: Hay algo en usted … irresistible. Algo que no tienen las demás.

Mary: Es intolerable que en mi propia casa se atreva usted a …

Marsán (fuerte): ¡Yo soy muy terco, Mary! Usted lo pensará.

Mary: ¡Váyase ahora mismo!

(p. 66)

This scene presents an example of a female holding to the tentative and nonassertive language which Robin Lakoff has shown to be a manifestation of women's role-related difficulties.¹³ Only after enduring numerous insulting remarks does Mary mount a firm command, one that she doubtlessly felt like voicing upon first hearing Marsán speak.

Another manifestation of the verbal barriers women in the play encounter appears in Lucila's frustrated endeavors to address the authorities concerning her husband's unlawful torture. She knows it useless to attempt to bring his case before a judge (p. 59). Talking with a lawyer has only left her with advice that she do nothing, lest matters become worse (p. 58). For this reason she is left to address Mary, who would then request that Daniel intercede.

Lucila's visit also underscores the insignificant position of Mary in her relationship with her husband. She is the classic inessential Other, denied knowledge of the specifics of her husband's employment. Though an accurate description of his work would be an unpleasant revelation for most people, in shutting his wife out of the professional aspects of his life Daniel demonstrates again his faithfulness to traditional male behavior. The phrase “trained incapacity to share” reflects such a posture and is produced by the ideal of masculinity that “To gripe about the job carries the connotation of weakness.”¹⁴ Thus Daniel remains silent for fear of his wife's incomprehension and disapproval as well as for ingrained fear of appearing unmasculine. As Kamarovsky puts it, “A strong man bears his troubles in silence and does not dump his load on the family” (p. 189).

Nowhere does one observe a total disdain for women symbolized more explicitly than in the rape of Lucila. In an attempt to force Marty to confess, a few days before his castration his wife is brought before him, and he must watch the physical abuse she suffers. As ugly a vision as the act conjures, it merits special attention. For it discloses that, in the eyes of these men, women serve the same function as tools or objects used to achieve desired results. The scene reflects what Susan Brownmiller terms “a male ideology of rape”: “It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.”¹⁵ Such fear is felt by Mary as she listens, at first in disbelief, to her former student's account of the horrors inflicted where Daniel works. She lives in relative ignorance and bliss until Lucila shatters her world with her accusations. Like Campbell's hero experiencing the unexpected call to adventure, she is roused from a state of psychic inactivity and thrust upon a journey for the truth of Lucila's words. Her quest toward enlightenment impresses because of the high stakes involved: the only happiness she knows; her traditional roles as wife, mother, and female.

As she discovers the particulars of Daniel's daily actions and realizes his genuine lack of resolve in dissociating himself from his work, Mary begins to experience increasing repugnance and fear of the world such men have created. She suffers nightmares wherein she sees Daniel trying to mutilate their son (pp. 91–93); regrets bringing a child into the world (p. 94); wholly refuses the idea of additional children (p. 90); wishes she had never met her husband (p. 110); and feels “una infinita desgana, una gran indiferencia” (p. 94) toward everything except her son, “¡Pobre hijo mío!” (p. 94). Prompted by this concern for her son, coupled with the disgust she feels for such a perverted world, Mary takes Daniel's pistol and uses his own weapon against him. By usurping the act of giving death, historically reserved for men, she symbolizes her rejection of the deviant patriarchy and signals how far she has evolved from her initial passive stance.¹⁶ So Mary's action acquires political symbolism. Since the torture described in the play can be interpreted readily as a reference to the Franco regime (hence the censorship the work encountered), Mary's change of attitude and final action can also symbolize total rejection of the existing political situation. Janet Pérez has observed and discussed such techniques of literary dissent in Franco's post-war Spain, and notes that the “slaughter of sacred cows” is a common form of attack. Authors would sometimes consciously undertake to express a subtle rejection of “myths and stereotypes promulgated by the regime via the creation of counter-myths.”¹⁷ In a passage which corresponds to what Buero accomplishes in La doble historia del doctor Valmy she explains:

The Madonna/mother stereotype—a chaste, long-suffering woman, self-sacrificing, faithful to husband, and god and country, a model of virtue and abnegation, domesticity and altruism—a character inhuman and angelical, was rejected by liberal writers as being on the one hand limited and unrealistic and on the other, an embodiment of Falangist ideology. Thus women characters who did not conform to the stereotype constitute a rejection, symbolic or real, of traditional programs and values.

(p. 224)

As her name indicates, Mary clearly stands as a Madonna archetype. But much of the play's power derives from her conscious rejection of this role as she lashes out against a world become vicious, inhuman to all weaker human beings.

Such an act of rebellion is inherently positive and not lessened by the fact that Mary is insane as the play concludes. It would seem that Buero has deliberately played on the sanity/insanity concept he develops more perfectly in El tragaluz.¹⁸ Mary had emotional problems before she met Daniel and the latter jokes throughout the play of curing her. Yet Daniel is the one who is sick, and Doctor Valmy and Daniel himself voice this diagnosis (pp. 84, 112). Mary's movement towards “insanity” parallels her distancing from Daniel and his infirm environment, and reminds one of el padre retreating from Vicente's world of “devorar o ser devorado.” In the end, Mary's act of shooting Daniel makes as much sense as the Father's stabbing of Vicente.

A confluence of images occurs as the play closes to support the thesis that the conclusion is more positive than pessimistic. As the abuela recites the fable to Daniel's son which opened the series of flashbacks, Brahms's Lullaby is also heard again in the background. It is noteworthy that the fable and lullaby, as well as nursery rhymes and folktales, are regarded as feminine genres of creative expression. Commenting on the factors which lead to the “silences” which prevent creative expression, Tillie Olsen remarks, “Very close to this last grouping are the silences where the lives never came to writing. Among these the mute inglorious Miltons: those whose waking hours are all struggle for existence; the barely educated; the illiterate; woman. Their silence the silence of centuries as to how life was, is, for most humanity. Traces of their making, of course, in folk song, lullaby, tales. …”¹⁹ Coincidentally, Brahms's Lullaby was taken from a folk tune, embellished by the composer, and dedicated to celebrate the birth of a female friend's son.²⁰ Finally, the grandmother's second rendition of the fable does not faithfully duplicate the version recited by her earlier. She omits one line which referred to Daniel: “Y todas las nenas se volverán locas por él” (p. 30). As La doble historia del doctor Valmy graphically depicts, this passage also referred literally and tragically to Mary. The grandmother's failure to repeat the line may represent her comprehension of the tragedy she has seen unfold, or symbolize a resolution. The omission perhaps represents the hope that Danielito will not repeat the errors of his father in dealing with his fellow man … and woman.

Notes

1. Juan Mollá, “Doce años después,” El Ciervo, 227 (February 1976), 31.

2. One of the best summaries of such censorship issues is to be found in Luis Iglesias Feijóo, La trayectoria dramática de Antonio Buero Vallejo (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1982), pp. 319–20. For a comment on the specific issues raised by censors see Patricia W. O'Connor, “Censorship in the Contemporary Spanish Theater and Antonio Buero Vallejo,” Hisp, 52 (1969), 282–88, particularly p. 286.

3. William Giuliano states flatly, “La doble historia del doctor Valmy es uno de los mejores dramas de Buero.” See his Buero Vallejo, Sastre y el teatro de su tiempo (New York: Las Américas, 1971), p. 140. Iglesias Feijóo reports that “la acogida de la crítica fue esta vez unánimamente favorable, así como la del público (se sobrepasaron las 600 representaciones), lo que prueba el permanente interés de la obra” (p. 320).

4. Throughout this study the following edition of the play is cited: Antonio Buero Vallejo, La doble historia del doctor Valmy. Relato escénico en dos partes, edición, prólogo y notas por Alfonso M. Gil (Chicago: Rand McNally, The Center for Curriculum Development, 1970). Doctor Valmy's allusion to Mary as protagonist occurs as he reflects on Daniel's case: “Ella vino días después a contarme otras cosas. El caso es más frecuente de lo que el profano cree: un enfermo nos confía algo y luego vemos en nuestra consulta al otro protagonista de la obra” (p. 84).

5. From Clifford Leech, Tragedy (London: Methuen, 1964), pp. 45–46, quoted in Frank Dauster, “Toward a Definition of Tragedy,” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 7, 1 (October 1982), 9.

6. Carmen González-Cobos Dávila, Antonio Buero Vallejo. El hombre y su obra (Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1979), p. 162.

7. Ricardo Doménech, El teatro de Buero Vallejo. Una meditación española (Madrid: Gredos, la Reimpresión, 1979), p. 237.

8. Jessie Bernard, “The Wife's Marriage,” in Mary Evans, ed., The Woman Question. Readings on the Subordination of Women (Oxford: Fontana, 1982), pp. 115–16.

9. Jean Leighton, Simone de Beauvoir on Women (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1975), p. 35.

10. This quotation is from Marielouise Janssen-Jurreit who paraphrases Levi-Strauss in her Sexism: The Male Monopoly on History and Thought, trans. Verne Moberg (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982), p. 284.

11. Susan Harding, “Women and Words in a Spanish Village,” in Dorothy G. McGuigan, ed., New Research on Women and Sex Roles (Ann Arbor, MI.: The University of Michigan Center for Continuing Education of Women, 1976), p. 166.

12. See Wendy Martyna, “Beyond the ‘He/Man’ Approach: The Case for Nonsexist Language,” in Evans, The Woman Question, p. 422, where she quotes Pauli Murray, testimony, United States Congress, House, Special Committee on Education and Welfare, Discrimination against Women, 91st Congress, Second Session, 1970, on section 805 of HR 16098.

13. Robin Lakoff, Language and Woman's Place (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), particularly p. 61.

14. Mirra Komarovsky, “The Quality of Domestic Life,” in Evans, The Woman Question, p. 189.

15. Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), p. 14.

16. Concerning the role-related significance of killing, Simone de Beauvoir suggests “superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills,” see her The Second Sex, trans., H. M. Parshley (New York: Wiley, 1968), p. 64.

17. Janet Pérez, “Techniques in the Rhetoric of Literary Dissent,” in Harry L. Kirby, Jr., ed., Selected Proceedings of the Third Louisiana Conference on Hispanic Languages and Literatures 1982 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1984), p. 224.

18. For a broader discussion on Buero's use of insanity see Kenneth Brown, “The Significance of Insanity in Four Plays by Antonio Buero Vallejo,” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 7 (1974), 247–60.

19. Tillie Olsen, “Silences: When Writers Don't Write,” in Susan Koppelman Cornillon, ed., Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1972), p. 100 (first published in 1965).

20. Peter Latham, Brahms (London: Dent [1948], 1951), pp. 34–35.