SOURCE: Schmidt-Cruz, Cynthia. “What Does Luciana Want? Reclaiming the Female Consciousness in Cortázar's ‘Cambio de Luces’.” Hispanic Review 65, no. 4 (autumn 1997): 415-30.

Any reference to the female characters in the short stories of Julio Cortázar is bound to set up a characteristic expectation in the mind of the reader. After all, what type of depiction of women can we expect from the writer who gained notoriety by coining the phrase “lector hembra” to denote a passive, non-critical reader? When we focus on the female characters in his best known stories, we might recall Rema in “Bestiario,” who is the victim of her brother's incestuous advances, or the character of Eva in “Instrucciones para John Howell,” who begs Rice to help her escape a husband bent on avenging her infidelity. In “La salud de los enfermos,” Mamá is lovingly sheltered from news of the death of her youngest son by solicitous family members, and the title character in “Liliana llorando,” even while weeping at the thought of her husband's imminent death, becomes romantically involved with his closest friend. Numerous critical studies have sought to define the varied treatments of female characters in Cortázar's stories, with descriptions ranging from “woman as intermediary or helper,” (Cedola, Ibsen, de Mora), “woman as idealized goddess” (Gyurko), “woman as object of man's fear and aggression” (Borinsky, Hernández del Castillo), and “woman as perverse beast” (Branco and Brandão). Within these diverse portrayals, the common denominator is the objectification of women within a male-centered perspective. Whether the female character is victimizer or victimized (Puleo, Turner, Planells), female subjectivity is suppressed, and the woman plays a role defined by a chauvinistic and patriarchal system (Francescato, Pita). And yet, in some of Cortázar's later stories, we can perceive a subtle change. Doris Sommer has noted that “Cortázar moves beyond a cavalier sexism. … Instead of considering women to be predictable, Cortázar increasingly allowed himself to be surprised by them and to narrate through their personae” (236).

A rereading of certain Cortázar stories with an eye attuned to the female consciousness reveals an insidious and ultimately successful female resistance to the attempt of the male protagonist to control and repress them. In her insightful work, What Does a Woman Want? Reading and Sexual Difference, Shoshana Felman illustrates how the careful reader can reclaim the female voice in texts with a male-centered perspective. To this end, she proposes a reopening and radical displacement of the now-notorious Freudian query, “What does a woman want?” This question posits femininity as the problem which perpetually baffles men; it is a dark and unknowable continent. Felman theorizes that great texts “are self-transgressive, with respect to the conscious ideology that informs them” (6), and her readings of three male texts show how they “enact female resistance, even as they struggle with it and attempt to overcome and erase it” (4). Felman's readings “seek to trace within each text, its own specific literary, inadvertent textual transgressions of its male assumptions and prescriptions. Although this literary excess, this self-transgression of the text …,” continues Felman, “might be at first invisible, inaudible, because it exceeds both the control and the deliberate intention of the writer's consciousness, I am suggesting that it can be amplified, made patent, by the desire—and by the rhetorical interposition—of a woman reader” (6). Alice Jardine's book, Gynesis, in a similar vein, calls for a rethinking of the master narrative in an effort to identify a space of some kind over which the narrator has lost control, a space which can be coded as feminine. She posits a problematization of the representation of women in contemporary thought and texts written by men, saying one must come up with imaginative strategies for exploring the feminine (25).

This study proposes to consider the treatment of sexual difference in Cortázar's short story, “Cambio de luces” (Cuentos completos/2). By reclaiming the suppressed female voice, I will show how the female character transgresses and foils patriarchal norms, despite the controlling male narrator. I will make use, in particular, of some of the “new (feminist) strategies of reading” (7) which Felman practices in her work. Felman bases her discussion of sexual difference on Luce Irigaray's critique of the status of womanhood in Western culture (22-23). According to Irigaray, in the polarity of Masculine/Feminine functions in Western thought, the Male term is privileged: “Theoretically subordinated to the concept of masculinity, the woman is viewed by the man as his opposite, that is to say as his other, the negative of the positive, and not, in her own right, different, other, otherness itself” (23). Within this perspective, woman is excluded from the production of speech, and identity is conceived as male sameness. This conception of identity represents a theoretical blindness to woman's actual difference, and it is this blindness, this failure to take into account woman's otherness, her subjectivity, her desire that ends up subverting the male-centered narrator in the texts under study.

Felman's rereading of Balzac's “Adieu” provides a model for my approach to Cortázar's “Cambio de luces.” In both stories the male protagonists, Philippe and Tito respectively, cannot conceive of female identity outside of the masculine measure of identity and value; “men are identified with the prerogatives of discourse and reason,” whereas “women are reduced to an object that can be known and possessed” (Felman 32-33). Philippe's mistress, Stéphanie, has gone mad; she cannot speak except to say “adieu,” and she cannot recognize Philippe. In former times, Philippe perceived Stéphanie as “‘the queen of the Parisian ballrooms’” (34). Felman points out that queen here implies a king—Philippe—and Stéphanie represented “above all, ‘the glory of her lover.’ ‘Woman,’ in other words, is the exact metaphorical measure of the narcissism of man” (34). Philippe hatches and executes an elaborate scheme to cure Stéphanie, but at the moment she regains her sanity and recognizes Philippe, she dies. Felman's analysis shows how the “text subverts and dislocates the logic of representation that it has dramatized through Philippe's endeavor and his failure” (38). In “Cambio de luces,” Tito's plan to mold his lover, Luciana, to fit his ideal image boomerangs on him when she leaves him for her ideal man. Thus, in both stories the male protagonists attempt to build monuments to themselves by putting a woman in a place that will glorify them, and these projects come to naught when the women ultimately refuse to play the roles assigned to them. The men fail because they operate from a phallo-logocentric position of reason and power which ignores the women's desire. My analysis of “Cambio de luces” will attempt to expose how the fallacious reasoning on the part of Tito, coupled with Luciana's subtle resistance, leads to the downfall of the male project of mastery.

An aside regarding my choice of models might be in order here, insofar as the use of French and Anglo-American critical theory to approach Latin American texts is a hotly debated issue among Latin American feminist critics. In a paper prepared for a Feministas Unidas session at the 1995 MLA Convention, Melissa Fitch Lockhart convincingly argues in favor of an inclusive approach: “To transcend binary models of here/there, colonizer/colonized, native/foreign, hetero/homo sexual it is my contention here that we must work towards a more inclusive, cohesive practice of feminist literary interpretation.” Several issues identified in Lockhart's and Catherine Den Tandt's papers (also prepared for the same session) come to bear in my choice of Felman's model for this analysis. First of all, the “reality of internal colonization” (Lockhart), understood as the imposition of European categories of thought in the Latin American context, cannot be doubted in the case of Julio Cortázar, who spent most of his adult life in France, and was familiar with European literature, psychology, philosophy, sociology, etc. The second issue that cannot be doubted is that Irigaray's critique of the status of women in Western thought transcends national and cultural borders. Finally, and most significantly, I believe Felman's perception of the self-transgressive nature of Balzac's text in regard to male assumptions is relevant to the Cortázar story, and this approach can shed new light on our understanding of the psychic structures underpinning Cortázar's work. Despite certain differences, both Balzac's and Cortázar's texts speak to the male encounter with femininity even as they enact female resistance to the male narrator. By following Felman's inspiration to encroach on the female desire in Cortázar's text and expose the consequences of the narrator's blindness to female subjectivity, we can decenter the male frame of reference in the text and take a fresh look at the depiction of gender roles in Cortázar's work.

Like so many of Cortázar's fictions, “Cambio de luces” is the tale of a failed relationship. Tito is an actor for the radioteatro of Buenos Aires, and always plays the part of the villain. One day he receives a letter from Luciana, a woman listener who professes to admire him despite the nefarious characters he portrays. When Tito writes back to thank her for the kind words, she responds with an invitation to arrange a meeting. Both Tito and Luciana have pre-conceived notions as to what the other will look like, and neither conforms to the expectations. Nevertheless, they get along well, and soon Luciana moves in with Tito. Tito previously had a four-year relationship with another woman but this had come to an end, and Tito was living alone. Gradually Tito instigates changes in Luciana's appearance and surroundings in an attempt to make her more closely approximate his ideal. When he thinks he has achieved perfection in his recreation of Luciana and truly loves her, he spots Luciana coming out of a hotel in the embrace of another man—strangely, a man who corresponds to Luciana's ideal image of Tito.

“Cambio de luces” is a story about identity and desire, and a woman's role within patriarchal society. Who is the desiring subject, who is the object of desire, and are these roles interchangeable? What will a woman do to please a man? To what extent will she sacrifice her identity to make him desire her? Why will a man delude himself about the character of the woman he professes to love? How can he be so blind to her real needs? And can he ever be certain about his own needs and identity? In “Cambio de luces,” the male narrator never bothers to ask himself, “what does Luciana want?” Thus, my rereading of the story will resurrect that question, and others which spin off it. For instance, why did Tito fail to recognize or acknowledge that Luciana could have needs and desires of her own? How did Luciana go about trying to get what she wanted? The attentive reader can discover in Luciana what the narrator failed to see due to his blind spots.

Highly stylized social settings—nineteenth-century Parisian ballrooms and radio soap operas—define the concept of ideal masculinity and femininity for Philippe and Tito.¹ These artificial worlds of posture and pretense revolve around the pairing of heterosexual couples with rigidly defined codes of appearance and behavior for both the male and the female. Those who subscribe to these codes achieve their sense of self-worth according to how closely they fit the image defined by these sociosexual stereotypes, and the male role accrues its value in relation to its complementary female role. After all, how can there be a leading man in a love story without a leading lady, or a king of the ball without his queen? Thus, Philippe and Tito value Stéphanie and Luciana not for themselves, but rather for how well they can play a feminine role which glorifies their male companion. The man seeks in his beloved a reflection of his own self, and she becomes “an object whose role is to ensure, by an interplay of reflections, his own self-sufficiency as a ‘subject,’ to serve as a mediator in his own specular relationship with himself” (Felman 36).

This “soap opera culture” plays a central role in “Cambio de luces.” Tito's romanticized but illusory version of himself is inspired, in a confused sort of way, by the radiodramas, and their plots, all monotonously alike with their predictable ending—“el inevitable triunfo del amor y la justicia según Lemos” (124)—prefigure the outcome of the Tito-Luciana love story. These stories of romance and intrigue become a text-within-the-text, a repeated configuration in Cortázar's stories. Tito seems to be particularly vulnerable to the appeal of this artificial melodramatic world because he is dissatisfied with his own life. He uses his artistic expression as a way of coping with the tedium and void he experiences in his daily life in Buenos Aires, spending his afternoons practicing and polishing his sinister roles in the radio dramas. His professed purpose is to “vengarme de esos papeles ingratos … haciéndolos míos” (120). Thus, his approach is one of transformation and appropriation; his revenge on the unflattering roles will be, ironically, to become the villain. Indeed, this willful confusion between his own identity and his theatrical roles has become a cornerstone of his life.

However, Tito's narcissism and desire for adulation is poorly served by his “papeles más bien secundarios y en general antipáticos” (119), and he secretly covets Jorge Fuentes' crush of female fans. The day he receives Luciana's letter—the only letter in three years—he compares this meager missive to the hero's legion of admirers: “nuestro galán Jorge Fuentes … recibía dos canastas de cartas de amor y un corderito blanco mandado por una estanciera romántica” (119). Tito unwittingly reveals his excessive pride when he describes his first meeting with Luciana: “era lógico que se hablara sobre todo de mí porque yo era el conocido … por eso sin parecer vanidoso la dejé que me recordara en tantas novelas radiales” (122). His disavowal “sin parecer vanidoso” serves to call attention to what it represses—his vanity, which fuels a desperate desire for an adoring fan who will confirm his fame and talent. By allowing Luciana to focus on his artistic representations instead of his “off-stage” self, Tito promotes a type of “mis-identification” on which he will ground their relationship.

Not surprisingly, Tito projects the fictional world of the love stories onto his relationship with Luciana, casting himself as the leading man and Luciana as his leading lady. He says that his meeting with Luciana would have given Lemos, the author of the dramas, an idea for another plot, but in Lemos' story, the boy would discover that Luciana was identical to his imagination of her. The fact that Luciana is different from his image of her proves, according to Tito, that these theories only work in Radio Belgrano, the world of artifice. At one point, he refers to an actress as “la alternera muchacha que lentamente yo envolvería en mi consabida telaraña de maldades” (121). This, of course, is what he will attempt to do with Luciana: he will try to wrap her in his web, subordinating her to serve his aggrandized vision of self. For Tito, Luciana is an object that can be mastered and possessed. When he projects his final move in his plan to conquer Luciana—“volverla definitivamente mía por una aceptación total de mi lenta telaraña enamorada” (125)—he repeats the spiderweb image he had used to describe the radio character's manipulations, again fusing his real-life identity with his theatrical roles, but changing the web of evil into a web of love. This replacement is another indication that he is trying to switch codes and take on the appearance of the galán. However, no matter how he qualifies it, a spiderweb is still something woven for the purpose of trapping and retaining a hapless victim in its tangled threads in order to feed on it, and it aptly describes his narcissistic urge to feed on Luciana's admiration for his talent.

In any event, Tito's amorous project is ultimately doomed to failure, because he has internalized the role of villain and is destined to repeat it despite himself. In the love triangles which invariably structure Lemos' plots, the galán always gets the girl, and Tito forgets he must play the villain, who never gets the girl and is foiled at the end. Thus, justice according to Lemos does eventually prevail, and, contrary to Tito's previous observation, his life does imitate his art because he willingly projects his fictional roles onto his behavior with Luciana. He tries to exploit the artistic experience as a way of overcoming his limitations, but that depends on his playing the leading man and not the villain—a stretch that, in the end, he could not execute. Finally, the artistic role does not constitute self-transcendence as he imagined, but rather fatalistic self-entrapment.² Tito's precarious construct of self depends on two layers of self-deceit: first, he attempts to live vicariously through the melodramatic roles; and secondly, finding insufficient food for his needy ego in his type-cast “bad guy” roles, he jealously tries to unsurp the role of galán. And of course, since a galán is defined by his ability to woo a beautiful and adoring damsel who will unproblematically reflect back his noble and virile image of self, Tito tries to cast Luciana in that role.

Tito falls for the Pygmalion lure: the dream of a perfect woman as a man's work of art, a monument to his narcissism. From the moment she walks into the tearoom, Luciana's appearance and personality are a problem for Tito. Her hair and eyes are too dark, she is too tall, and she is spirited and lively, not sad and pensive as Tito imagines his perfect romantic heroine. However, since she is his one and only fan, he sets about remaking her.

What leads him to believe he can transform this woman according to his desire? First of all, he revels in the control he exerts over his dramatic roles: he masters, perfects, and appropriates them. Perhaps this sensation of control over the characters he brings to life in the radioteatro convinces him that he can also sculpt Luciana according to his will. Secondly, he considers the prose of Luciana's letters to be “sencilla y tímida,” and thinks she must be the same way. From simple and timid, Tito can readily extrapolate “malleable,” and thus deludes himself into thinking that she will docilely submit to his makeover of her. Finally, when Luciana tells him about her past, which includes a boyfriend who left her for a job in Chicago and a failed marriage, Tito hears it “como si ella no hubiera hablado verdaderamente de sí misma ahora que parecía empezar a vivir por cuenta de otro presente, de mi cuerpo contra el suyo, los platitos de leche a la gata, el cine a cada rato, el amor” (123). Here, Tito reveals that he sees Luciana as the object of his desire, existing only for him and his world. He chooses not to conceive of her as a person with a past, something that would force him to admit that at one time she did have desires independent of his existence and control.

Tito's feminine ideal is like still another text-within-the-text, the script he will use as he resculpts Luciana. As soon as he reads Luciana's first letter, he constructs a mental image of her: “Esa mujer que imaginaba más bien chiquita y triste y de pelo castaño con ojos claros” (120). In his imagination, Luciana's pensive spirit is echoed in the atmosphere of her home, characterized by penumbra and melancholy:

cada vez que pensaba en Luciana la veía en el mismo lugar … una galería cerrada con claraboyas de vidrios de colores y mamparas que dejaban pasar la luz agrisándola, Luciana sentada en un sillón …, el pelo castaño como envuelto por una luz de vieja fotografía, ese aire ceniciento y a la vez nítido de la galería cerrada … donde habitaba la melancolía.

(121-22)

Tito gradually goes about the transformation of Luciana. First he asks her to lighten her hair, and then he ties it back, assuring her it looks better that way. To complete his ideal image, he changes the environment around Luciana, moving the lamp and changing the light bulb so a dimmer, shadowy light is cast upon her, and buys her a wicker chair and writing table. He has effected a “cambio de luz,” a “cambio de Luciana.” He rejects the extremes—bright light and black hair—for moderate mid-tones: dim, grayish light and chestnut hair. Akin to the “altanera muchacha” that the radio villain would wrap in his evil spiderweb, the initial Luciana is too spirited for Tito—her smiling eyes should have been sad, her free-flowing black hair should have been controlled and light brown, she should have drunk tea instead of whiskey. Tito is afraid of this vitality because it threatens his ability to control her; he prefers to repeat what he knows—art and imitation, mid-tones and melancholy—instead of daring to experience Luciana's liveliness and spontaneity. The chromatic symbolism evoked in the story's title speaks of Tito's attempt to dim Luciana's brilliance. Luminous Luciana shone too brightly to be able to reflect back Tito's specular image. He needed to tone down the light to be able to see his shadowy self-image in the penumbra.

Finally, he believes he has achieved perfection in his transformation of Luciana: “la besé largamente y le dije que nunca la había querido tanto como la estaba viéndo, como hubiera querido verla siempre” (125). However, Luciana's response to Tito's outpouring of affection and enthusiasm for her made-over self is silence: “Ella no dijo nada … estuvo quieta, como ausente. ¿Por qué esperar otra cosa de Luciana? Ella era como los sobres lilas, como las simples, casi tímidas frases de su carta” (125). Tito rationalizes Luciana's lack of an appropriate response because otherwise, if he were to recognize that the changes he has made in her do not suit her, do not represent her authentic self, he would have to ask himself what she really wants, admitting she is a creature of desire who may want something other than the image and the life he wants to mold for her. Since the hushed, distant woman fits into his ideal, he chooses to interpret this modification in her behavior as an extension of the traits he found in her letters.

Tito's project pitted art against life. To the vital woman with a will of her own, he preferred a lifeless artifact modeled on a stereotypical image of ideal femininity, something he could control and that would not threaten him with desires and meaning of her own.³ He misread Luciana's letters, her words, and her silences, because in the narcissistic, male-centered perspective in which he constructs himself as the origin of Luciana's meaning and identity, he cannot see her for who she is. He is interested in her only insofar as she compliments and confirms his own (mistaken) identity.

In order to recover or reconstruct Luciana's voice in a text which is narrated by a controlling male, we must look beyond Tito's misreading of her, which constitutes a type of smoke screen only partially covering over Luciana's desire. Using Felman's words, we must “encroach … on the female resistance in the text,” (4) scrutinizing the passages where Luciana's voice or Luciana's consciousness filters through the narrative voice: the text of Luciana's letters, her discourse which is reported by the narrator, and her actions, looks, gestures and silences.

In reality, Luciana's letters are not at all simple and timid, as the narrator characterizes them. Her first letter constitutes a strong appeal to Tito's masculine ego. She professes to know that he is not like the evil characters he portrays, and flatters his talent, saying she understands and admires him:

me hago la ilusión de ser la sola que sabe la verdad: usted sufre cuando interpreta esos papeles, usted pone su talento pero yo siento que no está ahí de veras … me gustaría ser la única que sabe pasar al otro lado de sus papeles y de su voz, que está segura de conocerlo de veras y de admirarlo más que a los que tienen los papeles fáciles.

(119-20)

Unlike Stéphanie in Balzac's “Adieu,” who, “by virtue of her madness, resists her ‘woman's duty’ … refusing … to reflect back simply and unproblematically man's value” (Felman 4), Luciana plays to the hilt the role of adoring female in order to win Tito over. Ironically, the trait which enables her to admire Tito—her belief in her intuition—will eventually lead her to see through his villainous manipulations.

Luciana's second letter includes an invitation to meet in a tea room, something she realizes is unfeminine behavior: “no me corresponde tomar la iniciativa pero también sé … que alguien como Ud. está por encima de muchas cosas” (122). Luciana acknowledges that she is violating the accepted norm, but expresses her conviction that Tito is above such social conventions, thus implying he possesses a type of moral superiority. In this way, Luciana astutely and subtly recasts her aggressive behavior as a virtue in Tito.

Tito describes their first meeting in the following manner:

No se disculpó por la invitación, y yo que a veces sobreactúo … me sentí muy natural. … De veras lo pasamos muy bien y fue como si nos hubieran presentado por casualidad y sin sobreentendidos, … era lógico que se hablara sobre todo de mí porque yo era el conocido … por eso sin parecer vanidoso la dejé que me recordara en tantas novelas radiales.

(122)

Tuning in to the woman's role, we can again see Luciana's feminine strength and skills at work. The fact that Tito remarked that she did not excuse herself for taking the initiative shows she is poised and self-confident, not self-deprecating as Tito expected her to be. Luciana's conversational skills are witnessed in her success in putting at ease a man who is normally unnatural in social situations, and she continues to stroke his ego by talking about him and his roles. Although Tito tells us several times that he is not vain, his positive reaction to her flattery proves otherwise. His narcissism proves to be a weakness which Luciana initially uses to her advantage to win him over, but which ultimately impedes his ability to know Luciana and understand her needs.

Luciana's observation regarding her expectations of Tito surprises him: “casi al final me dijo que me había imaginado más alto, con pelo crespo y ojos grises; lo del pelo crespo me sobresaltó” (123). While he felt it was natural for him to create a mental image of her, Tito is taken aback when Luciana assumes the role of desiring subject with Tito as the fantasized object.

Luciana's overall reaction to the changes Tito instigates in her appearance is one of apparent acquiescence and passivity. When he first asks her to lighten her hair, she laughs and says “si querés me compro una peluca … y de paso a vos te quedaría tan bien una con el pelo crespo, ya que estamos” (123). Thus, her first idea is to turn the tables by recalling her ideal image of him, and in so doing, casting herself as a speaking and desiring subject. But when Tito repeats the request, ignoring her joke about the wigs, she realizes this is important for Tito, and that she cannot expect reciprocity on his part, so she cedes on this minor point—her hair color—for a greater strategic compensation: keeping Tito happy with the relationship. When Tito assures her that she looks better with her hair tied back, “[e]lla se miró en el espejo y no dijo nada, aunque sentí que no estaba de acuerdo y que tenía razón, no era mujer para recogerse el pelo, imposible negar que le quedaba mejor cuando lo llevaba suelto antes de aclarárselo” (124). Here Tito offers a frank interpretation of Luciana's silence as the disapproval of a women who knows herself and how she looks best, thus providing an allusion to her self-confidence as well as to her silent resistance.

One afternoon Tito brings home a recording of one of the radio episodes and seats Luciana in the shadows so he can watch her listening to his voice, basking in the glow of his specular reflection in Luciana's eyes. Luciana knows something is unnatural about his manipulation of her environment: “por qué cambiás de lugar esa lámpara, dijo Luciana, queda bien ahí” (124). But instead of belaboring the point, she protests that he treats her too well: “Me mimás demasiado, dijo Luciana, todo para mí y vos ahí en un rincón sin siquiera sentarte” (124). Luciana's remarks when Tito presents her with the wicker chair and writing table again reveal her recognition that something is amiss. Nevertheless, she immediately compensates for her initial objection by expressing her willingness to comply and praising Tito's choice: “No tiene nada que ver con este ambiente, había dicho Luciana, entre divertida y perpleja, pero si a vos te gustan a mí también, es un lindo juego y tan cómodo” (125). Thus, although Luciana sees through Tito's intentions, instead of openly challenging him, she continues to go along with his whims and to flatter him. Finally, Luciana's speech evaporates into silence, and her last action speaks louder than words possibly could: as we know, Tito spots her coming out of a hotel in the loving embrace of a tall, curly-haired man.

Paradoxically, Luciana meticulously carried out her “womanly duty”—affirming her male companion's value—as a way of keeping him under her control. Luciana's seeming docility was actually a careful strategy on her part to keep Tito happy, even while she was inwardly resisting. Her outward compliance gave Tito the illusion that he was in control of her, but, in reality, it was Luciana who controlled the relationship from the very beginning—she chose Tito after listening to his voice on the radio and fantasizing about him for three years, she wrote him carefully crafted letters to pique his interest in her, and she took the initiative to invite him out on their first date. In order to lure him, she reflected back to Tito a trumped-up and highly flattering image of himself, something his vanity found irresistible. She made him think he desired her when what he really desired was the narcissistic mirror she provided for him, and then took the initiative to replace him when she found this relationship unsatisfying. Not at all a shrinking violet as Tito made her out to be, Luciana is a woman who knows how to get what she wants.

Luciana and Tito communicate through their mutual dissatisfaction: both are lonely, living derivative existences, and both envision a perfect companion whom they think will provide fulfillment and transform their lives. In order to fancy himself as a soap opera galán, Tito seeks a woman who will resemble his fictional heroine and adore him unconditionally. He could only conceive of Luciana as the object of his desire and the mirror of his soul, thus suppressing her voice and her subjectivity. But Luciana turns out to have desires of her own. She subverts and castrates the narrator when she deceives him with another man, turning Tito into not only an object, but a rejected object. The final scene is a manifestation of the uncanny when Tito realizes that his rival is actually his double—or Luciana's fantasized version of him.⁴ Luciana's insistence on her fantasy, her right to being a desiring subject, finally prevailed.

While the character of Tito, the narrator, plays out male blindness, the role of Luciana, the resisting female, ironizes Tito's narcissistic ignorance of her needs. In the final twist of “Cambio de luces,” we see another familiar Cortázarean technique, what I like to call “the Cortázarean boomerang”: the character who is punished for his or her inauthentic behavior. And curiously, this story is about a seemingly submissive and fawning woman who ends up undermining chauvinistic male behavior. Thus, Cortázar's story transgresses its male assumptions of prepotency as it exposes its lack of control over the feminine consciousness which finally dethrones the male narrator. Tito's fate is destitution from his mastery, from his desired role of galán, and reinstatement as the villain in the invariable love triangles which structure the soap opera plots. But are these textual transgressions entirely inadvertent? Or are they a manifestation of the Cortázarean self-irony? Is this the winking eye of a man who knew himself to be an incurable male chauvinist, but, at the same time, was compelled to call into question his own assumptions and certainties, realizing that ultimately, he couldn't get away with suppressing female subjectivity forever? At this point we recall Doris Sommer's words: “Instead of considering woman to be predictable, Cortázar allowed himself to be surprised by them and to narrate through their personae” (236). And in Luciana, he met a version of Lucifer, the angel of light who rebelled against God. Lucid, luminous Luciana, whose silence marked her inner rebellion, had desires of her own which ultimately refused to be subordinated to the male desire.

The critical studies published to date which focus on the female characters in Cortázar's stories invariably describe women whose subjectivity is suppressed and frustrated by a patriarchal system, often mentioning or implying Cortázar's chauvinism or misogyny as the underlying motivation. Felman's feminist strategies of reading, which show us how to reclaim the female desire in a male-centered text, inspire a new reading of sexual difference in “Cambio de luces,” and thus provide a new interpretation of both the male and female roles, as well as Cortázar's attitude toward women. Once we find a way to break away from the controlling male's hold on the text and explore the female consciousness in “Cambio de luces,” we uncover hidden meaning: a strong-willed woman who eludes male domination and a man who is foiled by his ignorance of her desire. Despite the repeated claims to Cortázar's misogyny, our study validates Sommer's observation of Cortázar's new openness toward his female characters in the latter part of his career, as witnessed in this perceptive portrayal of a woman who subverts patriarchal behavioral norms.

Notes

1. Rosario Ferré, in her analysis of “Cambio de luces,” also mentions the social dimension afforded by the radionovelas: “Las radionovelas les dan la oportunidad de escapar al mundo pacato y represivo de la clase media a la que pertenecen y refugiarse en un pasado romántico y aristocrático” (107).

2. For a detailed and insightful analysis of the representation of art in Cortázar's work see Lanin A. Gyurko's article, “Art and the Demonic in Three Stories by Cortázar.”

3. The concept of a woman distanced by art is inspired by Debra A. Castillo's article “Reading Over Her Shoulder: Galdós/Cortázar.”

4. For an analysis of Tito's double, see Amaryll Chanady's article, “The Structure of the Fantastic in Cortázar's ‘Cambio de luces’.”

Works Cited

Borinsky, Alicia. “Fear/Silent Toys.” The Review of Contemporary Fiction 3.3 (1983): 89-94.

Branco, Lúcia Castello and Ruth Silviano Brandão. “Circe: o Feitiço e o Enigma.” A Mulher Escrita. Rio de Janeiro: Casa Maria, 1989. 37-41.

Castillo, Debra A. “Reading Over Her Shoulder: Galdós/Cortázar.” Anales Galdosianos 21 (1986): 147-60.

Cedola, Estela. “El oficiante y el acólito: Roles femeninos en la obra de Cortázar.” Nuevo Texto Crítico 4 (1989): 115-28.

Chanady, Amaryll. “The Structure of the Fantastic in Cortázar's ‘Cambio de luces.’” The Scope of the Fantastic: Theory, Technique, Major Authors. Eds. Robert A. Collins and Howard D. Pearce. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985. 159-64.

Cortázar, Julio. Cuentos completos/2. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1994.

Den Tandt, Catherine. “Negotiating Metropolitan Theory: Latin American Feminist Criticism.” Feministas Unidas Newsletter 15.2 (1995): n.p.

Felman, Shoshana. What Does a Woman Want? Reading and Sexual Difference. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993.

Ferré, Rosario. Cortázar: El romántico en su observatorio. Hato Rey, Puerto Rico: Literal, 1990.

Francescato, Martha Paley. “The New Man (But Not the New Woman).” The Final Island. Eds. Jaime Alazraki and Ivar Ivask. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1978. 134-39.

Gyurko, Lanin A. “Art and the Demonic in Three Stories by Cortázar.” Symposium 37.1 (1983): 17-47.

Hernández del Castillo, Ana. Keats, Poe, and the Shaping of Cortázar's Mythopoesis. Purdue University Monographs in Romance Languages 8. Amsterdam: John Benjamins B. V., 1981.

Ibsen, Kristine. “Hacia la puerta del infinito: El papel de la mujer en Rayuela.” Mester 18.1 (1989): 33-40.

Jardine, Alice. Gynesis. Configurations of Woman and Modernity. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.

Lockhart, Melissa Fitch. “(De)colonizing Latin American Feminist Literary Criticism.” Feministas Unidas Newsletter 15.2 (1995): n.p.

Mora, Carmen de. “‘Orientación de los gatos’ (apuntes para una poética).” Lo lúdico y lo fantástico en la obra de Cortázar. Vol. 2. Coloquio Internacional. Centre de recherches Latino-Americaines, Université de Poitiers. Madrid: Fundamentos, 1986. 167-80.

Pita, Beatrice. “Manipulaciones del discurso femenino: ‘Yo y La Otra’ en ‘Usurpación’ de Beatriz Guido y ‘Lejana’ de Julio Cortázar.” Crítica: A Journal of Critical Essays 2.2 (1990): 77-83.

Planells, Antonio. “Represión sexual, frigidez y maternidad frustrada: ‘Verano,’ de Julio Cortázar.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 66 (1979): 233-37.

Puleo, Alicia Helda. “La sexualidad fantástica.” Lo lúdico y lo fantástico en la obra de Cortázar. Vol. 1. Coloquio Internacional. Centre de recherches Latino-Americaines, Université de Poitiers. Madrid: Fundamentos, 1986. 203-12.

Sommer, Doris. “A Nowhere for Us: The Promising Pronouns in Cortázar's ‘Utopian’ Stories.” Discurso Literario 4.1 (1986): 231-63.

Turner, John H. “Sexual Violence in Two Stories of Julio Cortázar: Reading as Psychotherapy?” Latin American Literary Review 15.30 (1987): 43-56.