[In the following essay, Cyppess discusses how Garro's plays affect the constructed image of Mexican women in literature.]

The concepts developed by Michel Foucault regarding the use of discourse bring to our attention the fact that implicit in a system of discourse are rules and restrictions, privileges and exclusions.¹ The rules that govern the production of discourse and the procedures that control, select, organize, and redistribute it are expressions of a culture handed down from generation to generation. In Latin American culture, women have generally been considered silent figures, submissive to the patriarchal powers that govern their society, whether they be the fathers of the family or of the Church. Women's real distance from the centers of power can be translated linguistically as a restriction in the production of discourse in literary texts. It is pertinent in this regard to remember Foucault's contention that the fact of writing itself is a systematic conversion of the power relationship between the controller and the controlled; that is, the one who has the power also controls the written word (the discourse).

In applying this concept to the literary tradition, it is apparent to many readers, as Virginia Woolf reminds us in A Room of One's Own, that although women may have been visually present as images in literature, they have been verbally absent from the literary tradition as producers of discourse. In regard to the Mexican theatrical tradition, from the time of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in the seventeenth century to the modern period there has been a general absence of women dramatists, according to the records of the literary-critical tradition.² The socio-economic changes of the twentieth century have enabled women to assume more active roles in society, including that of authorship. Now that there are increasing numbers of Mexican women dramatists, it is important to focus on the nature of their production of discourse and how their texts contribute to the cultural mythology of the image of women. I will begin my study of visual and verbal distances in the Mexican theater by analyzing the plays of Elena Garro (1920-).

When Carlos Solórzano referred to Elena Garro in his Teatro latinamericano en el siglo XX, he called her “mujer de excepcional talento y de extraordinaria receptividad” (woman of exceptional talent and extraordinary sensitivity).³ In commenting on her three one-act plays first produced in 1956, Solórzano concluded that Un hogar sólido (A Solid Home),Andarse por las ramas (Beat Around the Bush), and Los pilares de doña Blanca (The Fonts of Doña Blanca), brought to the Mexican theater “una nueva frescura que se apoya en el lenguaje popular y en breves fábulas que son como juegos en las que se advierte una profunda y rara dimensión poética” (a new freshness based on popular language and short, gamelike fables that reveal a profound, unusual poetic dimension) (p. 181). Despite such early praise and Garro's subsequent production of six additional one-act and two three-act plays, her dramatic work has received little critical attention. While initial readings saw in her work a dichotomy between reality and fantasy and a tendency toward the evasion of reality, more recently the social aspect of her drama has been recognized, in particular her exploration of woman in society.⁴ A reading of her plays from a semiotic perspective brings forth the variety of women as well as the underlying exploration of the processes that shape signification.

My analysis of Garro's production of discourse is based on a semiotic perspective, or the study of signs and sign systems and the function of these systems within a cultural, performative context, a method utilized in a growing number of studies of the drama.⁵ By applying semiotic methodology we may study the production of meaning on stage, taking into consideration not only the linguistic system but also the spatial relations (the proxemics) and the kinesic or gestural codes. A reading that analyzes only the semantic or referential level of the dialogic interchanges without considering the other dramatic codes may derive an interpretation that appears to support a stereotyped image of woman on Garro's stage. I would suggest, however, that by decoding the dialogic interchanges and the reciprocal actions of the dramatic moment, it becomes apparent that Garro's texts explore the relationship between expression and content, or between signifier and signified. The texts, therefore, question the very nature of the linguistic system that has generated our concept of society, including the stereotyped image of woman. The key plays in this system are Andarse por las ramas (Beat Around the Bush) and El encanto, tendajón mixto (Enchantment: Five and Dime).

As a title, Andarse por las ramas has a popular metaphoric connotation: it is a cliché that signifies talking around a subject without getting to the point, to beat around the bush in the English equivalent. A colloquial expression, it implies that one is speaking indirectly. The denotative level of the phrase, literally in Spanish “to go along the branches of a tree,” is almost always ignored. One may assume from the title, then, that the play will deal with the theme of indirect speech, in the sense of pretexts. However, it would be a superficial reading of the play to conclude that it is merely “la ilustración de otro refrán” (the literal rendering of another proverb) in the same manner as Buenaventura's En la diestra de Dios Padre.⁶ In fact, not only is the polysemous nature of the phrase presented, but also an illustration of the general signifier-signified to generate a sign function.

Since semiotic theory is important to my reading of the text, I shall repeat the following passage of Umberto Eco in regard to the concept of sign as an introduction to my own discussion:

A semiotic relationship exists when, given any material continuum, it is segmented, subdivided into pertinent units by means of an abstract system of oppositions. The units which this system makes pertinent constitute, according to Hjelmslev, the expression plane, which is correlated (by a code) to units of a content plane, in which another system of oppositions has made pertinent certain (semantic) units through which a given culture “thinks” and communicates the undifferentiated continuum which is the world. The sign, therefore, is the correlation, the function which unites two “functives,” expression and content. But the “functives” can enter into different correlations; correlations are mobile, and a given object can stand for many other objects, which is how one can explain the ambiguity, the semantic richness of the various types of language and the creation, the modification, the overlapping of different codes.⁷

As we shall see, the expression plane of “andarse por las ramas” enters into mobile correlations and stands for both the metaphoric and literal content functives. Two different codes are created that allude to different signifying processes, to different systems of behavior and approaches to “reality.”

That Don Fernando, who is said to represent reason, uses the signifying process that is metaphorical, while Titina, who is related to lunar-lunático (lunatic), uses the literal signifying process, is an ironic inversion of the rational, patriarchal universe. That is, the father figure, Don Fernando, speaks indirectly, evading the literal level. His wife Titina, whom Don Fernando considers to be irrational, in the here and now of the drama keeps to the direct content functive of the sign. While their disagreement in this case is based on a connotative-denotative difference, in other situations their disagreements will derive from a different interpretation of signifieds; that is, the content with which they fill the linguistic signifier will be conflicting, with Titina providing an imaginative, open, more magical reading. Ultimately, we may conclude that Titina's procedures resist permanence and closure, while Don Fernando relies on the authority and tradition of convention to determine meaning.

Let us return to the specific elements of the text. The proxemic code places Don Fernando at the head of the table, just as he is the head of the family. His exalted position of power is verified on the linguistic level when his wife Titina addresses him using formal Spanish linguistic forms. “¿Ha pensado usted, don Fernando de las Siete y cinco, en donde se mete los lunes?” (Have you ever wondered, Don Fernando of the Five-o-seven, where Monday goes?).⁸ In this utterance, Titina not only uses the usted form, but also gives him a full title: “Don Fernando de las Siete y cinco.” The name Fernando has historical significance as an allusion to the king of Spain at the time of the Conquest, Fernando de Aragón. As Dauster points out, the chronological reference 7:05 refers to the fact that Fernando always expects to eat at that time. While seven may be considered a magical number, the specifics of 7:05 may imply that any sense of magic inherent within him has been destroyed by his immersion in the artificial world of conventional chronology. On the other hand, the semantic level of Titina's previous statement alludes to her imaginative conception of time.

In contrast to Titina's deference to her husband, Don Fernando addresses his wife with the informal familiar tú, often in the imperative mood. Contrast her formal “Perdone, don Fernando. ¿Quiere usted que traiga … ?” (Excuse me, Don Fernando. Shall I bring you … ?) (p. 84) with his curt “¡Justina, Justina! te estoy hablando. ¡Responde!” (Justina, Justina! I'm talking to you! Answer!) (p. 85).

On the kinesic level, the family's joint action concerns the evening meal, in particular the drinking of a bowl of soup. This act represents Don Fernando's whole mechanistic, rational outlook on life. As he eats, he continually looks at his watch, for soup must be served at a particular time, and each day a specific but different soup must be served. In contrast to his mechanical movements he says that the time is 7:07, a doubling of seven that might imply a magical moment, but Don Fernando is not privileged to see the magic. For him, 7:07 marks an arbitrary convention to which he gives egotistical meaning. It is past the time for him to eat a specific food. The ritual of soup, like other rituals of his life, are self-reflective, ego-centered acts.

For Titina, on the contrary, a bowl of soup reflects the creativity of the universe, the natural world rather than the mechanistic system: “En los platos de sopa a veces caen estrellas, hay eclipses, naufragios” (Sometimes stars drop into the soup, there are eclipses, shipwrecks) (p. 85). In this situation Titina shows her flexibility and creativity. Their different responses to the sign soup are repeated with other sign functions.

Lunes (Monday), for example, as a signifier is acknowledged by Don Fernando as an arbitrary choice to express its content: “Los lunes son una medida cualquiera de tiempo, una convención. Se les llama lunes como se les podría llamar pompónico” (Mondays are just a way of marking off time, a convention. They could just as well be called pomponic) (p. 84). Here Don Fernando offers us another way of saying that the signifier-signified relationship is arbitrary, a social convention that functions to convey meaning. Titina refuses to accept his association: “Pompónico no sería nunca lunes. Pompónico sería algo con borlas” (Pomponic would never be Mondays. Pomponic would be something with tassels on it) (p. 84). This response does not negate the arbitrary nature of the signifier-signified relationship; rather it shows a nascent rebellious spirit that attempts to reject old social codes and instill new ones.

Further examples of Titina's rebellious spirit are presented by her kinesics. When Don Fernando commands her to speak, her response is not verbal, but rather kinesic. According to the stage directions, she goes to the back of the stage, and on the back wall draws a house whose door she opens and through which she disappears. Above the wall, the branches of a tree appear, and Titina returns to stage presence seated on top of the branches of a tree. While she is accomplishing this act of distancing, motivated by Don Fernando's command, he talks to the empty chair where she had been sitting at the table. As the following dialogue takes place, Titina is literally “por las ramas,” while Don Fernando employs the term metaphorically.

DON F.:
—Siempre haces lo mismo. Te me vas, te escapas. No quieres oír la verdad ¿Me estás oyendo?
TITINA:
(desde el árbol) Lo oigo, Don Fernando.
DON F.:
(a la silla vacía) La locura presidiendo mi casa. La fantasía a la cabecera de mi mesa. La mentira impidiendo que sirvan los jitomates asados de los lunes. Y tú sin oírme. Las mujeres viven en otra dimensión. La dimensión lunar. ¿Me oíste? Luuunaar.
POLITO:
Titina te oye y también te oigo yo.
DON F.:
Se escapa y lo peor de todo es que a ti también te enseña a irte por las ramas.
TITINA:
(desde el árbol) Yo no creo que sea malo irse por las ramas.
DON F.:
(a la silla vacía) Irse por las ramas es huir de la verdad.
TITINA:
Las ramas son verdad. Polito, dile a tu papá que las ramas son verdad. (p. 86)
DON F.:
You always do just that. You get away from me, you escape. You don't want to hear the truth. Do you hear me?
TITINA:
(from up in the tree) I hear you, Don Fernando.
DON F.:
(to the empty chair) Madness rules in my house. Fantasy at the head of the table. Lies, keeping Monday's stewed tomatoes from getting on the table. And you, not hearing a word I say. Women live in another dimension. The lunar dimension. You hear me? Luuunaar.
POLITO:
Titina hears you, and I hear you, too.
DON F.:
She gets away and the worst of it is, she's teaching you to beat around the bush, too.
TITINA:
(from up in the branches) I don't see anything wrong with beating around the bush.
DON F.:
To beat around the bush is to run away from the truth.
TITINA:
The bush is truth. Polito, tell your papa that the bush is truth.

Before analyzing the dialogue and the spatiotemporal aspects of this scene, let us consider first the utterance that caused the action. Don Fernando had addressed a command to Titina, “¡Responde!” (Answer!). He expected her to respond verbally to his command to speak. Second, her movement away from him to a house of her own creation are gestures that signify her rejection of the world view represented by Don Fernando. That she cannot verbally address him and explain her rejection reflects her cultural position as the silent Mexican woman. Yet she has been able to communicate her intent to rebel, if not to Don Fernando, certainly to the reader/audience (henceforth referred to as R/A). Furthermore, it is also important to note that the receivers of Titina's utterances—Don Fernando on one hand, Polito their son with the R/A on the other—see two different sign systems in function.

Don Fernando addresses an empty chair as if Titina were sitting there. He calls her previous ideas about soup irrational and labels her behavior with the metaphor “irse por las ramas” (beat around the bush), which to him means “huir de la verdad” (run away from the truth).

Yet despite his kinesic and proxemic behavior, Titina is indeed spatially located on the branches of the tree and not in the chair. Don Fernando appears to be unaware of this, despite being convinced that he has his feet on the ground, that he is rational and knows the truth. The R/A sees that Titina is on the branches, so that her statement “Las ramas son verdad” (The bush is truth) appears true. Also, in contrast to Don Fernando's statement, “Aquí se trata de tener los pies honestamente en el suelo” (The thing is to keep your feet honestly on the ground) (p. 87), Titina responds with a reference to the natural configuration of the tree: “Las ramas tienen los pies en el suelo” (The bush has its feet on the ground). In order to understand the implications of this dialogue we should go beyond the denotative level. Titina uses “ramas” (bush) and “árbol” (tree) to signify truth and reality, while for Don Fernando “ramas” contradicts “pies en el suelo” (feet on the ground) and is associated with “huir de la verdad” (run away from the truth). We notice in this syntax that he refers to “la verdad” (the truth), whereas Titina says, “las ramas son verdad” (the bush is truth). The use of the definitive article by Don Fernando implies there is one truth, which is the equivalent of saying that there is one expression-content correlation. Don Fernando represents the naive view that the sign is a set signifier-signified relationship, while Titina acknowledges the multiplicity of correlations.

Perhaps it would be helpful here to refer to the cultural meanings that have been associated in the past with the sign function tree. One of the possible meanings attributable to the tree has been noted by Mircea Eliade, who has found that it has been used to symbolize absolute reality, reality that goes above and beyond the limits of everyday reality.⁹

On the basis of this symbology, Titina's association with the tree could suggest her connection with absolute reality, as was already alluded to in her reading of the soup.¹⁰ Moreover, as befits the polysemous nature of signs in this text, a correlation in two directions seems possible: Titina-branches-tree—earth and Titina—tree branches-absolute reality. Like the tree, Titina is connected both to the earth and to the upper spheres. Furthermore, as with Titina's reading of the soup, her relationship to the earth is not egocentric, as is Don Fernando's. She is not dependent upon her individual contact to be related to it, but is part of a continuum of being: Titina—branches—tree—earth—reality. Although Don Fernando literally has his feet on the ground, and Titina literally does not, his insistence that he knows the reality and the truth is undermined by the visual impact of Titina in the branches of the tree while he addresses an empty chair. That Titina's perspective is supported by the dramatic context is verified in the proxemic code of the play. From the R/A's view, Titina is on a higher level than Don Fernando physically and by extension, epistemically; that is, her system of knowledge is verified in contrast to Don Fernando's. Don Fernando remains in the narrow limits of the house while Titina can see over the walls; her vision is expanded, as we suggested by her association with the tree. Semiotically, Don Fernando can be read as a sign of the patriarchal social system rejected by Titina because of its restraints and restrictions.

It is interesting that Don Fernando does acknowledge a difference between himself and Titina on the basis of a generic category. As quoted above, he complains that “Las mujeres viven en otra dimensión. La dimensión lunar” (Women live in another dimension. The lunar dimension). This idea is based on a stereotyped perception that Cirlot alludes to: “When patriarchy superseded matriarchy, a feminine character came to be attributed to the moon and a masculine to the sun.”¹¹ As patriarch, Don Fernando reasserts the moon-woman association and includes, too, the idea that the moon is a nonrational dimension, for he doubts Titina's rationality.¹² Here it may appear that Garro is agreeing with the traditional concept that the moon is representative both of the feminine and of lunacy. However, only Don Fernando makes this association, since he interprets signs in a narrow sense. For him, Titina is a nonrational being, a lunatic. If, on the other hand, the moon is also considered a representative of multiplicity, as Titina is in regard to her reading of signs, then the symbol is not negative. In matriarchal terms, it is a fertile, unifying sign: “The moon not only measures and determines terrestrial phases but also unifies them through its activity; unifies, that is, the waters and the rains, the fecundity of women and of animals, and the fertility of vegetations.”¹³ To live in a lunar dimension, therefore, need not be negative or a sign of insanity; it can instead point to the greater, extended reality already mentioned in connection with the sign tree, a reality that in literary terms is related to the surrealists' concept of absolute reality.

Gloria Orenstein has related Garro's plays to the surrealist aesthetic.¹⁴ While she does not analyze Andarse por las ramas, this play certainly supports Orenstein's observation. The play's vision of reality goes beyond the phenomenological and suggests instead an association with Breton's concept: “Je crois à la résolution future de ces deux états en apparence si contradictoires qui sont le rêve et la réalité en une sorte de réalité absolue, de surréalité” (I believe in the future merging of these two states, in appearance so contradictory, of dreaming and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, a surreality).¹⁵ If we recall Titina's reading of the soup, her ability to draw a house and enter it, and her poetic language in general, all this would relate to Breton's “dream sequences”; those are the experiences she would add to Don Fernando's view of reality to create absolute reality.

Although Titina appears to realize with Breton that “L'imagination est peut-être sur le point de reprendre ses droits” (Imagination may well be on the verge of reclaiming its rights), her husband has rejected her and her perspective.¹⁶ Their son Polito supports her, as one meaning of his name (polo, in English pole) implies. As a child Polito has not yet entered into the narrow world of signs represented by Don Fernando. But when he repeats the imaginary ideas of his mother, his father becomes upset: “¡Van a reprobar a este niño en la escuela!” (They're going to flunk that kid out of school!) (p. 87). The school, an institution of society, correlates with Don Fernando's ideas of reality and will reject Polito, just as Don Fernando refuses to accept Titina's views.

While Polito is at one extreme from Don Fernando in his ability to read beyond the trivial aspects of everyday reality, Lagartito, the young man who meets with Titina in the second half of the play, ultimately performs in the same limited way as Don Fernando. At first, he briefly tries to respond to her imaginative universe. His responses, however, exist only on the linguistic level, for when he attempts to bring her back home, he thinks only of her home with Don Fernando: “Voy a llevarte a tu casa” (I'm taking you home) (p. 90), he informs her very officiously, a directive that Titina interprets as a return to the narrow meaning of reality. Her response is once again to scale the heights of the tree.

It is important to note that each directive expressed in terms that would limit her activities receives a nonverbal, active response from Titina. She leaves the man who has addressed her and returns to the back of the stage to draw her own house, which she reenters, only to reappear on the branches of the tree (pp. 90-91). The repetition of this act reinforces its sign function not as lunacy, an irrational content, but as a deliberate action reflecting her rejection of the narrow world of both Don Fernando and Lagartito. At first, Lagartito, like Don Fernando, does not see that Titina has ascended the tree, and he continues to address the space she had occupied. Her physical distance from him and her superior stance again indicate that her perspective is affirmed in contrast to the inferior position of Lagartito.

An interesting variation occurs in the dialogue between the two progresses. Unlike Don Fernando, who is lost in his rational world, Lagartito attempts to follow Titina in her imaginative universe, as signalled by his utterance “Titina, ¡yo quiero ser lunes!” (Titina, I want to be Mondays!) (p. 92). Here he acknowledges the multiplicity of signifieds for a signifier. When Lagartito repeats Titina's verbal phrases, it is an indication that he enters into the same system as she. Unlike Don Fernando de las 7:05, he is able to see her on the tree.

¡Titina! ¡Mírame Lagartito! (Lagartito se vuelve, la mira entre las ramas y se acerca.)

Lagartito—Dame la mano, Titina (Titina le alarga el brazo. Lagartito le toma la mano.)

(p. 95)

TITINA:
Look at me, Lagartito! (Lagartito turns, looks at her in the tree, and comes over)
LAGARTITO:
Give me your hand, Titina (Titina reaches out. Lagartito takes her hand).

Although Lagartito visually acknowledges Titina's presence on the tree, touches her, and verbally communicates with her, he cannot sustain this relationship. He is unable to continue in her world of extended reality. When a coquettish woman passes him in the street and stares at him, the special relationship between him and Titina is broken. He relinquishes his contact with Titina and her world and follows the woman in the street, who is the ordinary signifier of woman, a reified essence of woman for Titina: “Tus pies, Lagartito, están hechos para recorrer aceras, oficinas y señoras. Tus pies y tus ojos” (Your feet, Lagartito, are made to take you down sidewalks, through offices and ladies. Your feet and your eyes) (p. 96). In that phrase, señoras is on the same level as the objects, sidewalks and offices.

Titina realizes Lagartito's inability to reach her heights in the reference to his pies (feet), a signifier used previously in association with Don Fernando and his rational world. His failure is based on his feet and his eyes, on his physicality and limited imagination. The importance of the relationship between eyes and the ability to see expanded reality will be repeated with greater elaboration in El encanto, tendajón mixto (Enchantment: Five and Dime).

That Lagartito ends up as limited as Don Fernando is visually apparent at the play's end. The two men are proxemically related when they both pass Titina, who is still in the branches of the tree. She is described as being “acomodada como un pájaro” (snug as a perching bird) (p. 96), yet their references to her position are negative. Each man's verbal comments are examples of indirect speech references to Titina's position. Fernando sings, “Uy, uy, uy, qué iguana tan fea / que se sube al árbol” (Uy, uy, uy, what an ugly lizard / up that tree), and Lagartito adds, “No te andes por las ramas uy, uy, uy, uy” (Don't beat around the bush, uy, uy, uy, uy) (p. 96). It would not be an exaggeration to say that metaphorically they both “andan por las ramas” (beat around the bush) in reference to Titina's existence in the tree, a signifier whose signified they are capable of interpreting only along normalized lines. If we, too, interpret Titina's position in the tree in their terms, then “el dicho popular se ha convertido en triste realidad” (the old proverb turned into a sad reality).¹⁷ But one should question if it is really a “triste realidad” (sad reality) for Titina to be distanced from the patriarchal system of Don Fernando and Lagartito. Their use of the saying represents a patterned regularity in which the multiplicity of possible and arbitrary relationships between a signifier and signified has been narrowed by their social system to admit only one acceptable sign function. Their code stresses conformity while Titina's stresses innovation, a symbolic inversion within the communicative system. If we move to the proxemic code, we see that Titina, who as a woman has been shown verbally and kinesically to be in an inferior social position to her husband (recall the linguistic forms of address and her position at table), on stage has enjoyed a superior position. While she is silent, her sign function communicates an ascendant role, another inversion of the communicative system.

In regard to the social function of symbolic inversion within the communicative system, Barbara Babcock-Abrahams sees such deviations as a “way of ‘playfully’ calling to attention the classificatory systems that regulate the social world they ‘manipulate’ … and thereby question or dispute or at least comment upon the existing order of things.”¹⁸ Titina functions, then, in a way that playfully calls attention to the classificatory systems regulating the social world that would require her to live alongside Don Fernando. That she breaks away from him physically and linguistically, and existentially as well, can be considered the beginnings of a revolution, or at the very least an affirmation of an expanded vision of reality. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that Titina's actions are an attack against the patriarchy, for as Nelly Furman reminds in an article on textual feminism, “To refuse the authority of a signified means rejecting the status of defined object in favor of the dynamics of becoming and privileging the freedom of process rather than the performance of product.”¹⁹

Although the dominant positive image is Titina, the female protagonist, Garro affirms the supremacy not of one gender over another, but of a sign system that favors multiplicity over uniformity, freedom of expression over conformity. It is a perception of the world that includes “lo racional” (the rational) as well as “la dimensión lunar” (the lunar dimension). Garro repeats this integrative vision in El encanto, tendajón mixto.²⁰ Once again, the woman protagonist asserts this perception of multiplicity: (Mujer) “No importa que el hombre pierda el camino en los caminos de la mujer que son muchos y más variados que cualquier camino real” ([Woman]: It doesn't matter if man loses his way in the ways of woman, there are so many, and each so different, more than any real/royal way) (p. 142).

This statement reiterates the message of Andarse por las ramas. Unlike Titina, who is always a visible entity but not always verbally communicative, the unnamed woman of El encanto appears first as a disembodied auditory image, a pure signifier, to three men lost on el camino real. The signifier real in that phrase has two possible signifieds: either as a reference to royal road or as real road (reality). For the men, their social system (referred to in the royal connotation) is their reality. The real road here will be shown to be as unidimensional and limited as Don Fernando's rational world. But unlike Titina, who was not able to integrate either of the two men into her extended reality, in El encanto the woman is able to achieve greater success, for one of the three men responds to her enchanted or extended view.

The play begins with a narrator who introduces the story of the three muleteers lost in the shadows. The youngest, Anselmo, appears ready to travel beyond the limits of ordinary reality. As he asserts, “Todo está al alcance de los ojos, sólo que no lo sabemos mirar” (Everything is in sight, it's just we don't know how to look at it) (p. 132). His statement explains, too, why Don Fernando did not see Titina, but Anselmo not only sees the woman, he unites with her. Anselmo knows how to see and understand signs.

Anselmo's words are magically responded to not by his companions, but by the voice of a woman, “Hasta mis ojos están al alcance de los tuyos” (Even my eyes are in sight of yours) (p. 132). Notice that the woman repeats the image of eyes. Whereas the tree was used in Andarse as a symbol for extended reality, here Garro uses eyes as a sign to refer to the process of seeing as a spiritual act, as an act of understanding.²¹ The eyes (the understanding) of the woman are within the reach of Anselmo. Her vision of extended reality comes to be shared by Anselmo because he is willing to respond fully to her, in contrast to Lagartito, who is inconstant in his relation with Titina.

In this play Garro also refutes Don Fernando's limited vision of woman as a solitary member of “la dimensión lunar.” Here the woman says, “El hombre nace encantado y de la mujer depende que así siga o que luego nada más que las piedras mire” (Man is born enchanted and it's up to woman whether he keeps it or just goes around looking at rocks) (p. 138). As a child, man is like Polito, still enchanted or in the realm of the imagination. He leaves that state only when he ignores woman to concentrate on piedras of the ground of the rational world.²² Anselmo is still part of the “dimensión lunar” while his companions have left it. It is not simply because Juventino and Ramiro are older and therefore further from the state of enchantment; in addition, unlike Anselmo, they consider themselves to possess razón. As Juventino remarks to Anselmo, commenting on the young man's interest in the woman: “¡Te dejas llevar muy pronto! Por causa tuya nos tenemos que ir; todavía no gozas razón” (You really get carried away! Now it's your fault we have to leave. You still haven't got the use of your reason) (p. 139). Juventino and Ramiro can be equated with Don Fernando in that they side with reason, while Anselmo is still not identified with this narrow view.

For Anselmo, woman is linguistically and epistemologically equal to the world: “¡hallarla a ella es hallar al mundo!” (finding her is finding the world!) (p. 140). She is real to him, whereas for the others she is an apparition, a she-devil. They see with the eyes of ordinary reality and cling fiercely to their camino real, which for them is more secure than the path offered by the woman. In response to their narrow vision, the woman expresses her interpretation of their reality:

Un viejo como tú es un hombre muerto. Así naciste. Nunca supiste encontrar el filo del agua, ni caminar los sueños, ni visitar a las aguas debajo de las aguas, ni entrar en el canto de los pájaros, ni dormir en la frescura de la plata, ni vivir en el calor del oro. No sembraste las corrientes de los ríos con las banderas de las fiestas, no bebiste en la copa del rey de copas. Tú no naciste. Tú moriste desde niño y sólo acarreas piedras por los caminos llenos de piedras y te niegas a la hermosura. ¡Tu cielo será de piedra por desconocer a la mujer y no habrá ojos que de allí te saquen!

(pp. 147-148)

An old man like you is a dead man. You were born that way. You never learned how to find the edge of the storm, or stroll across dreams, or visit the water beneath the water, or go inside the birds' song, or sleep on the cool of silver, or live in the warmth of gold. You never sowed the river currents with festival banners; you never drank from the goblet of the playing-card King of Goblets. You were never born. You died ever since you were a child and all you do is lug rocks down the rocky roads and turn away from beauty. You'll go to a rocky heaven because you never knew woman and no eyes can break you loose from there!

The above speech contains many provocative images that cannot be fully examined in the scope of this essay. We should notice, however, certain aspects of the linguistic level. First, the woman uses the familiar form in addressing the man; she does not consider herself to be subservient. Also, her use of the preterite verbs expresses the finality of her reading of his death-in-life existence. Each phrase is a negative to describe the two men's denial of the imaginative, enchanted reality to which their lack of understanding, their lack of knowledge of woman, has led them. They are like stones, unresponsive to the larger reality that can be achieved only through integration with woman.

Anselmo, on the contrary, sees la hermosura (beauty) and woman as the key to extend reality:

MUJER:
Dime, Anselmo Duque ¿tú me ves como soy?
ANSELMO:
¿Yo? Yo te veo como eres: resplandeciente como el oro, blandita como la plata, hija de las lagunas, rodeada de pájaros, patrona de los hombres, baraja reluciente, voz de guitarra, copa de vino buscada desde el primer día que fui Anselmo Duque, y hallada este tres de mayo. … (p. 140)
(WOMAN):
Tell me, Anselmo, do you see me as I am?
(ANSELMO):
Me? I see you as you are: shining like gold, smooth as silver, daughter of the still pools, birds all around you, patroness of men, a glistening stack of cards, voice like a guitar, a glass of wine I've sought since the first day I was Anselmo Duque, and found this Third of May.

A comparison of Anselmo's speech with the woman's shows that many of the same images are repeated.²³ Moreover, on the level of sign functions, Anselmo attributes the beautiful, bright, and musical signifieds to the signifier woman.

In order to signify that he desires to continue his relation with her and accept her vision of reality, he must accept the cup of wine she offers him, a cup that shines like a star. His act of drinking from her cup as a method of initiation onto her camino (way) has clear sexual implications. At the same time, the signs associated with the act also repeat the content of multiplicity we found in Andarse. The cup is related to a star, which is also how Titina was described by Lagartito: “Y tú la estrella cuyos cinco picos son más blancos que la estrella más blanca …” (And you the star whose five points are whiter than the whitest star) (p. 95). The sign star nearly always alludes to multiplicity. Once Anselmo drinks “la copa de las estrellas” (the wineglass of the stars) (p. 142), which signals his integration with the woman, with multiplicity, the action on stage is as surprising as Titina's drawing of the house. At the first sip from the cup, Anselmo, the woman, and the store called “El encanto” disappear from the scene. Anselmo's union with the woman has removed him from the camino real of his friends onto another level of reality.

When they disappear both acoustically and visually, the stage returns to darkness, but where there had been three men on the camino real, now there are two. Ordinary reality has been reduced, but extended reality has been enriched. Anselmo has disassociated himself from his two companions, from reason and convention, and entered “El encanto,” or rather reentered the state of enchantment into which he had been born. Like Titina, Anselmo has refused the authority of the signifieds of the two men in favor of a dynamic, imaginative universe in which authority and tradition are rejected. It is important to note that although Andarse por las ramas takes as its point of departure the clichéd linguistic phrase to explore the possibility that every sign function or cultural entity can enter into a multiple set of correlations, El encanto, tendajón mixto performs the same function using archetypal topoi. The signifiers that are exposed range from Eve and the Holy Grail to the surrealist's amour fou.

It is possible to read Anselmo's journey as a variation of the Grail quest. According to the traditional version, the youngest of the knights sets forth in search of the holy cup. The quest is a long and lonely journey that will prove successful only to the man who is innocent and pure of heart, that is, without knowledge of woman. Garro inverts this tradition, this sign function, by having the youngest initiate the journey to a new reality not in a state of sexual innocence, but rather by means of his union with woman, as signaled by his drinking from her cup. Here the cup unites man and woman.

One might see that kinesic act as symbolic of traditional motif of man losing himself in a woman because of erotic love, a popular surrealist theme, as we know from Breton's L'Amour fou. While Juventino and Ramiro read the event in the traditional way, in the text Anselmo does not consider himself lost; rather, he interprets his union with the woman to be enriching: “ella me dio los ojos para que mirara lo que ahora miro y los sentidos para que entrara en los placeres que ahora encuentro” (She gave me the eyes to see what I'm seeing now and the senses to know what I'm knowing now) (pp. 148-149).

Juventino and Ramiro try to lure Anselmo away from the woman in order to return with them to el camino real by reminding him of his mother. They attempt to fight the power of the woman with the power of another woman, the mother figure. One might interpret this as an inversion of the battle between the old kind and the new, in which the cycle of life is regenerated by the victory of the new king. Here Garro has replaced the male signifiers with women.

Finally, another traditional female archetype is referred to on the kinesic and linguistic levels. The woman appears to recreate the actions of Eve as she urges Anselmo to drink the cup of wine: “Bébala, Anselmo” (Drink it, Anselmo), she urges, as Eve urged Adam to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. In this play, however, the woman is not betraying man with her directive. In Garro's version she leads man toward knowledge, not out of the Garden, but into an Eden of “otra luz, otros colores, otras lagunas” (another light, other colors, other still pools) (p. 147). The sign of woman has been inverted from Eve-betrayer to guide toward enchantment. As in Andarse, Garro has inverted each sign function of the traditional system and offered new meanings for the signifiers that suggest new possibilities for the image of woman. Orenstein has observed, “In this play, Garro has created the prototype of the new female surrealist protagonist, according to the Bretonian ideal woman. She is a seer, in revolt against conventional interpretations of reality, a poetess-alchemist who makes the imaginary real for the initiate.”²⁴ While that statement appears all-inclusive, I would add to it. For it is not just the Bretonian ideal woman that Garro creates but an ideal couple, a union of male and female. Titina in her tree has been replaced by the integrated Anselmo-mujer of El encanto. The victory of an integrated vision of extended reality is a precarious one, of course, which Garro recognizes by leaving on stage the two men still on their camino real vowing to do away with “el encanto,” but Garro at least has done her part to create positive feminine images.

Notes

1. See The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), p. 216. The appendix entitled “The Discourse on Language” is especially useful.

2. See my article “¿Quién ha oído hablar de ellas? Un repaso de las dramaturgas mexicanas,” Texto Crítico (México), no. 10 (1978), pp. 55-64.

3. México: Editorial Promaca, 1964, p. 181. Further page references to this work will be cited parenthetically in the text.

4. See Frank Dauster, “El teatro de Elena Garro: evasión e ilusión,” Revista Iberoamericana, no. 57 (1964), pp. 84-89; reprinted in Ensayos sobre teatro hispanoamericano (México: SepSetentas, 1975), pp. 66-77 (page numbers will refer to this edition of the article). Gabriela Mora, “Los perros y La mudanza de Elena Garro; designio social y virtualidad feminista,” Latin American Theatre Review, 8, 2 (1975), pp. 5-14.

5. See Raúl H. Castagnino, Semiótica, ideología y teatro hispanoamericano contemporáneo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova, 1974); Susan Wittig, “Toward a Semiotic Theory of Drama,” Educational Theatre Journal 26 (1974):441-54; and Anne Ubersfeld, Lire le théâtre (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1978).

6. Solórzano, Teatro, p. 182. Willis Knapp Jones also calls the play a work based on the proverb and sees it as “a disconnected presentation of people who somehow achieve integration,” in Behind Spanish American Footlights (Austin: University of Texas, 1966), p. 490. My interpretation of the play contradicts his reading.

7. Umberto Eco, “Looking for a Logic of Culture,” in The Tell-Tale Sign: A Survey of Semiotics, ed. Thomas Sebeok (Lisse/Netherlands: Peter de Riddle Press, 1975), p. 15.

8. Garro, “Andarse por las ramas,” in her Un hogar sólido y otras piezes en un acto (Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 1958), pp. 82-83. Further references to this play will be cited parenthetically in the text.

9. In Juan Cirlot, compiler, Dictionary of Symbols (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962), p. 328.

10. Gloria Feman Orenstein, The Theater of the Marvelous (New York: New York University Press, 1975), discusses Garro's presentation of absolute reality in relation to three other plays, El encanto, tendajón mixto, Los pilares de doña Blanca, and La señora en su balcon.

11. Dictionary of Symbols, p. 204.

12. Before she leaves his house Don Fernando asks Titina, “Por última vez. ¿eres capaz de ser racional?” (p. 86).

13. Cirlot, Dictionary of Symbols, p. 204.

14. See note 10 above.

15. “Manifeste du surréalisme (1924),” Manifestes du Surréalisme (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1972), p. 48.

16. Ibid., p. 21.

17. Dauster, “El teatro de Elena Garro,” p. 72.

18. Quoted in Wittig, “Toward a Semiotic Theory,” p. 447.

19. “Textual Feminism,” in Women and Language in Literature and Society, ed. Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker, and Nelly Furman (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 49.

20. El encanto, tendajón mixto, in Un hogar sólido y otras piezas en un acto, pp. 129-49. Further references to this play will refer to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text.

21. See Cirlot, Dictionary of Symbols, p. 95.

22. The correlation piedra/camino real is suggested by the narrator's description: “Los caminos eran entonces más largos, eran de piedra y los nombraban camino real” (p. 129).

23. For a discussion of the imagery in relation to the alchemical symbols used by the surrealists, see Orenstein, The Theater of the Marvelous, pp. 110-13.

24. Ibid., p. 113.