Among the recurring themes in the narrative of Manuel Puig is the problem of personal alienation and integration in contemporary society.¹ His novels frequently explore this issue as it is affected by the relationship between the sexes, addressing power-possession, the repercussions of male dominance and the possibilities of positive change.² A study of Puig's narrative reveals that his developing ideology of power and integration is expressed not only through the plot structure and characterization, but also through the interplay of signs in the discourse. One set of signs that is closely linked to this theme is illness and the various mutations of that sign which are elaborated in Puig's narrative: asthma, tuberculosis, poison/torture, mental illness and cancer.

The sign illness is first generated in the discourse of Herminia, the unmarried piano teacher in La traición de Rita Hayworth, who believes that asthma has restricted her life, prohibiting any integration with society and ending a potential career. Asthma functions in that text as both an excuse to avoid risks and as a source of true suffering and isolation. Through shared symptoms, prohibitions, and fears, asthma also implies the potential for destruction and death which is suggested by the sign tuberculosis in Boquitas pintadas. In El beso de la mujer araña, Valentín's poison-induced illness serves as an agent of transformation, mediating the movement between masculine-feminine, adult-child, powerful-powerless. In each case, illness implies a loss or lack of power, a degree of isolation, and the possibility of death.³ These implications of the sign are first questioned in Puig's fifth novel, Pubis angelical. This article will examine the discourse of Pubis angelical⁴ and, through an elucidation of the way in which the sign cancer/illness is generated, developed, and finally supplanted in the text, demonstrate a critical moment in Puig's evolving ideology.

The protagonist of Pubis angelical is an Argentinian woman, Ana, who is being treated for a serious illness in a Mexican clinic. Ana's mental discourse is presented through transcribed sections of her diary. Events that precede her admittance to the hospital or which occur outside of the clinic are narrated through recorded conversations between Ana and her lover Pozzi and her friend Beatriz. Juxtaposed and intercalated with the segments of dialogue and diary is a long fantasy sequence, narrated in the third person, which tells the story of a mother and daughter and offers metaphoric parallels to Ana's situation.⁵ The structure of the novel produces a play between the first person of the diary and dialogue, and the third person of the fantasy and results in a multiplication of Ana's: a paradigmatic, metaphoric disintegration. This multiplication or desdoblamiento is grammatically expressed in Ana's first-person narrative: she repeatedly refers to herself in the first-person plural.

Throughout the text Ana is preoccupied by two things: the complex and unsatisfactory relationship between the sexes, and her own poor health. She questions the doctors' hopeful prognosis and fears that she has terminal cancer, the taboo illness of the twentieth century. Cancer has been metamorphized by contemporary society, as were tuberculosis and mental illness in the nineteenth century,⁶ and the extra-textual implications of cancer are inevitably evoked by any mention of the disease. An outstanding characteristic of the illness is the secretiveness which has been associated with it. The presence of cancer is often denied or concealed by both cancer victims and their doctors, and this secrecy suggests that the illness is viewed as dirty and evil as well as painful and life-threatening. The militaristic language which is used to describe cancer research (i.e. the war against cancer) both expresses and sustains the common understanding of cancer as an invasion of foreign cells which attack and take over the body, replacing the you with the non-you. This same imagery converts the patient into a battleground upon which others fight, waging a war for his or her life. Finally, cancer has also come to describe this patient, to signify a certain type of victim, a specific personality which is thought to be susceptible to the disease. Cancer is commonly believed to be “a disease of insufficient passion, afflicting those who are sexually repressed, inhibited, unspontaneous, incapable of expressing anger.” (Sontag, 21) Since it is thought that the victims' repression of anger and violent emotions, their inability to feel, cause the disease, there exists the accompanying belief that cancer is contracted because the victim unconsciously allows, or even wills, its presence.

Ana's discourse suggests that much of the content of this societal, extra-textual sign cancer is shared by the inter-textual sign illness. For example, the ill woman's thoughts often turn to the control or power which her husband seemed to exert on her and her response to that power:

Fito. Qué ganas de echarle en cara unas cuantas. Pero cuando lo tenía frente a mí nunca me animé a decirle lo que pensaba de él. No era por miedo ¿por qué era que me callaba? Yo creo que ese tumor me vino de acumular rabia. (29)

Here Ana suggests that her contained, accumulated anger has caused the tumor, the destructive growth inside her. In this case, the relationship between illness and rage is one of contiguity and displacement: the two are metonymically integrated. Men also experience anger, according to Ana, but the effects of their anger are very different:

[Los hombres] se enojan tanto … En ese momento les sale no sé qué furia de adentro, les sale como un buitre de adentro del pecho. A mí me dan miedo cuando están así … Debe ser porque a ese buitre no le importa nada de nadie. Es un pajarraco que lo único que sabe es atacar, sin medir las consecuencias. (227–8)

The two images of anger elaborated by the discourse are both agents of destruction. However, the men's rage is described as a vulture which flies out of the man and attacks others, while the woman's anger is restrained or repressed, and produces the tumor which destroys the self. The link between illness and femininity is clearly established: men get angry, women get sick.

Not only is Ana troubled by the presence of a destructive, repressed anger, she is also disturbed by a corresponding absence of positive sensations. She repeatedly complains that several months after marrying Fito she stopped enjoying sex. Fito wanted Ana to go to the doctor and see if this change had a physical basis, thereby suggesting an interrelationship between a loss of sensation and illness/injury. She refused to go, denying a physical cause for her condition: “Me emperré en que no … Yo estoy segura de que no, que la razón no era física.” (56) The same incapacity to enjoy sex recurred with Pozzi: “Y con Pozzi … desde el principio vi que tampoco sentía mucho.” (57) Again, Ana's history and discourse link her sexuality to illness.

Ana's physical problem is echoed by an emotional inadequacy. She professes a lack of love for Beatriz (“No siento por ella ese cariño que sentía antes por mis amigas” (75), and she writes about Pozzi, saying:

Es buen mocísimo, es simpático, es inteligente, es sensible, siempre tiene tema de conversación, es sexy, tiene buen corazón ¿qué le falta entonces? Nada. Entonces no hay duda que es mi culpa, que yo no puedo sentir nada por nadie. (87)

Ana questions her own attitude towards Pozzi and concludes that she is incapable of loving anybody. She also confesses to feeling little or nothing for her daughter (“yo en Clarita nunca pienso. Ni me acuerdo de ella” [281]) or her mother (“No la aguanto” [75]). This lack of feeling results in a physical separation between the three women: Ana's mother wants to come and visit Ana in the clinic, but Ana refuses to allow her to do so.

In a conversation between Ana and Pozzi, the woman insinuates that this emptiness or absence of feeling is eventually replaced or filled with envy: she covets the health of others.

[Ana]—¿Y por qué me acaricias? ¿por qué tan afectuoso?

—No me saques la mano así, parece que te diera asco.

—Mirá, en este momento lo que me das es envidia, que vos estés sano y yo no. (142)

Ana's envy for others' health functions in her discourse as an excuse, an explanation of her behavior and attitude.

Ana's inability to enjoy sex offers a physical parallel to her incapacity to feel love. Although both of these problems precede the onset of her disease, illness functions as an explanation for them, as a way in which to justify the mysterious lack of feeling, to explain the inexplicable.

The many possibilities and implications inherent in Ana's condition are explored and expressed in the text through the elaboration of a complex sign, doll, and the movement and interplay between the several mutations of this sign.⁷ This metaphoric sign first appears in the opening passages of the novel. Ana fantasizes about a famous actress who has abandoned her career to marry an extremely wealthy man. After the wedding, the husband drugs his bride before having sexual intercourse with her; the next morning the woman awakens from a terrifying nightmare in which she was viewing an operation:

[un] medico obeso … con un bisturí le abría el pecho: a la vista aparecía—en lugar de corazón—un complicado mecanismo de relojería. Era una muñeca mecánica, y rota, no una mujer enferma. (9)

In this passage, the husband's violation of his wife is expressed through a metaphoric parallel which again links sexuality and illness: a repulsive physician cuts open his patient. The patient, who appears to be a woman, is then revealed to be a mechanical doll with clock-work instead of a heart: she is not ill, but broken. The sign implies an unreality, a lack of humanity, which is hidden or secret, masked by a female exterior. The mechanical nature of the figure, literal on the level of fantasy or dream, reappears as a metaphor in reality when Ana records a remark of Pozzi's in her diary:

Pozzi me lo dijo, que yo era una máquina y que organizaba mi semana como, no me acuerdo lo que mo dijo, como una hormiga no, pero algo desagradable era. Claro, él podía organizar su semana y yo no. Otra palabreja que él usaba era manejadora. Que yo lo quería manejar a él como manejaba los encuentros reglamentarios con Clarita. (91)

Pozzi's transposed speech substitutes machine for Ana, implying a high degree of emotional detachment, an ability to be extremely organized and calculating. She reports that he also labeled her manejadora, saying that she desired to control others. These characteristics are apparently tied to femininity; Ana suggests that whereas she is deprecatingly labeled una máquina, Pozzi is simply organized. The sign being elaborated, the mechanical doll/woman, suggests both the state of being manipulated and the concurrent, threatening ability to be manipulative in turn.

A further mutation of the mechanical doll occurs late in the novel in a futuristic fantasy about the actress's daughter W218. This young woman's situation is the result of radical, institutionalized, sexual oppression. She is dehumanized by her number-name, she works as an official government prostitute, and she depends on a personal, portable computer for the assessment of her emotions and situation. The government programs the computer and controls W218 through this machine; however, this machine is not part of the woman:

“Ojos llenos de lágrimas + extraño peso en el centro del pecho + espera interminable de carta + …”, en vez de continuar con las tristes premisas decidió oprimir el botón rojo que cancelaba la consulta. Iban en aumento sus sospechas respecto a la discreción del centro de Asistencia Electrónica. (199)

Here, the woman is depicted as able to abandon or disregard the computer and act independently.

An important variation on the sign mechanical doll appears early in the novel when Ana related her mother's criticism of her divorced lifestyle. Her mother insists that Ana should be home caring for her child instead of working, and Ana comments: “Y qué razón tiene, eso es lo errado, no aceptar nuestra condición de mujer, de muñeca sentimental, qué se le va a hacer?” (24) Ana's discourse substitutes muñeca sentimental for mujer, or for a certain kind of woman who accepts the traditional male-female roles. The metaphoric sign implies a state of passivity, of being a cared-for object. Ana's self-interrogation implies that she has not accepted this condition of muñeca sentimental, but also questions her rejection of it. Later, when conversing with Pozzi about their past relationship, Ana confesses:

— … me pareció que si me mostraba disponible te ibas a cansar de mí.

—¿De veras eso pensaste?

—Sí, este tipo me va a tratar como un juguete, pensé. (176)

Here, the metaphoric sign toy which is employed in her discourse suggests a plaything, an object that men use, and then may tire of and discard. It is a mutation of the muñeca sentimental which is also an object, but cared for and kept. A further parallel to this image of a toy appears in the fantasy sequence about W218. The young woman is unexpectedly able to read men's minds when she turns twenty-one and when she has sex with her lover, LKJS, she hears the man's stream of consciousness:

Me das pena … me recuerdas esa pobre muñeca que mis hijas arrojan constantemente al suelo, la muñeca de trapo, la más sucia; la que nunca se rompe y por eso maltratan. (239)

In this passage irony results from the play between the different levels of knowledge. LKJS's ignorance leads him to underestimate W218 and suppose that she is an object which is vulnerable, helpless, and mistreated. The reader knows that W218 is telepathic at this point, overhearing all of the man's thoughts, and therefore much more powerful than he.

Ana's discourse generates the polisemic figure of the doll, a sign which not only describes the protagonist's situation as a maquinaria exquisita,⁸ but which also incorporates and expresses the multiple, complex links between the feminine condition and illness which are suggested by the text. Pozzi's accusation that she is a machine and Ana's own experienced loss of sensation lead to the appearance of several mechanized doll-women in her fantasy. These mechanical figures are described as being operated on or manipulated by men, but also as being capable of manipulation themselves. They also suggest a related contradiction between appearance and interior. The final articulation of the sign demonstrates a movement from a clock-work heart to a separate computer that can be—and is—disregarded. Ana's discourse additionally develops the related sign doll-toy which metaphorically substitutes for woman, and suggests that she is an object or plaything. In this case, instead of offering mutations of the metaphor, the fantasy reveals the truth of it (as perceived by Ana): the protagonist's fear that Pozzi would treat her like a toy is realized when W218 hears her lover refer to her as a rag doll.

Ana explores her condition as a broken doll not only in order to understand it, but in order to change it; she wants desperately to be fixed, to get better. The prognosis for her physical condition remains unknown to both the protagonist and the reader throughout most of the novel; the narrative represents Ana's search for the significance of her illness, of her condition. Ana looks to her friends and her doctors for insight and information, but finds their language and gestures difficult to interpret. Ana recounts one exchange between herself and the doctor to Beatriz:

— … después le pregunté para cuando los rayos, y me miró raro.

—No serás tú la que desconfía demasiado?

—Beatriz, todos los operados de tumor después se aplican rayos, como precaución. (18)

In her search for the significance of her symptoms, Ana notes the absence of the prescribed treatment for tumors. When she questions the doctor he responds to her question with a strange look. This look and the accompanying absence of a verbal answer constitute a signifying act. We have, as Genette describes, “a language that betokens what is not said, and precisely because it does not say it” (265).⁹ Beatriz responds to Ana's account of the conversation with a question, suggesting that the sick woman is too suspicious, and therefore suggesting also that the doctor was being truthful. But Ana also fears that Beatriz herself is withholding information from her. She writes in her diary:

Hay algo, no sé, algo demasiado devoto en ella [Beatriz]. Que no sea lo que estoy pensando. Que no sea que ella sabe que mi enfermedad no tiene cura. Ella es mi mejor amiga en México, y el; médico pudo habérselo dicho a ella sola. Que no sea eso. Tal vez todos lo saben, menos yo. (75)

Beatriz's manner, the “algo demasiado devoto,” communicates the very information that she is trying to conceal from Ana. Her behavior constitutes a signifying act or intention which is meant to imply affection and concern, but instead suggests pity.

The signifier cancer is only articulated once in the text, during a conversation between Pozzi and Ana. The man has come to visit Ana and, finding her feeling poorly, suggests that he should leave so that she can rest. Ana replies:

—No te asustes, el cáncer no contagia.

—¿Qué estás diciendo?

—Un chiste, Pozzi. Te estoy haciendo un chiste. (142)

Ana labels her illness with the signifier cancer in an apparent attempt to provoke a reaction from Pozzio and to ascertain the truth about her condition. Pozzi is aware of the nature of her illness, but affects ignorance; he denies the relationship between the signifier cancer and Ana's symptoms. Ana then says that she is joking, implying an incongruity between the signifier cancer and the context. She goes on to compare her symptoms with the doctor's comments:

—Me dicen que … el tumor era benigno y esto que siento ahora no tiene nada que ver con lo que me sacaron … Me siento mal, me operan, y a las cuatro semanas me vuelven los mismos síntomas de antes. Habría que ser muy tonta para no darse cuenta … [the doctors] Me tranquilizan, me dicen que todos los enfermos se imaginan cosas. Pero soy yo la que siente los dolores. (142–3)

In this passage, Ana's discourse contrasts the doctors' assurances with her own, experienced pain. Ana believes that pain implies serious illness; the doctors do not deny this relationship, instead they insinuate that the pain exists only in her imagination.

Ana suspects that she has cancer because of the pain which she experiences and the simultaneous refusal of the doctors and Beatriz to acknowledge it: the very absence of the signifier cancer in their discourse serves to reveal its presence. The presence of cancer is also implied by Ana's circumstances which match those of the mythical cancer victim: she is alienated from her family, unable to feel, described as machine-like, and full of repressed anger. The presence of cancer is suggested through the presence of its metaphorical content, which then functions as a way to both describe and justify her condition.

It is Pozzi who provokes Ana's rebellion, who incites her to reject the crippling connotations of her illness. The man has come to Mexico in order to enlist Ana's help in his efforts to obtain the release of two Peronistas who are under arrest in Argentina. He wants Ana to call Alejandro, an admirer of hers and a powerful supporter of the government, and invite him to visit her. Pozzi's colleagues would then kidnap the man and attempt to trade him for the two political prisoners. Ana, suspicious of the Peronistas and frightened for her own safety, has refused to contact Alejandro despite Pozzi's emotional pleas and political arguments. During the final, crucial meeting between Ana and Pozzi, the man asks her one more time to call Alejandro for him. He tells her that his action would be a way to achieve a good, hacer bien, while she still could. When Ana asks Pozzi what he means by mientras pudieses, he responds:

—Basta de macaneos, Anita, por favor. Vos sabés a qué me refiero.

—¿Qué? ¿te crees que me voy a morir?

—Vos lo sabés, mejor que yo.

—Yo no sé nada. Yo quiero curarme, eso es lo único que sé. (221)

Pozzi doesn't say cancer, but the absent signifier nevertheless functions in the discourse as he insists that Ana understands the context of their conversation, that she is aware of the referent. She volunteers “te crees que me voy a morir,” asking him if the sign to which he is referring implies death. He again turns the responsibility for naming the object back onto her, refusing to articulate the signifier cancer or even to use metonymy, to describe it. Ana refuses to admit any understanding of the context of the conversation.

Pozzi then confronts Ana openly with the seriousness of her condition, telling her that the doctors operated on her but couldn't do anything for her, and are pessimistic about the outcome of a second operation. He states: “La probabilidad de salvarte es mínima … el tumor está en el estomago pero también en una parte del pulmón, ya está ramificado” (221). Although Pozzi is articulating Ana's exact fears by telling her that her symptoms signify impending death, the woman continues to deny any knowledge of her condition, even disclaiming her pain.¹⁰ Pozzi finally says:

—Yo desde que lo supe tengo una inmensa tristeza, Ana. Vos sos parte de mí, la parte del placer, no sé como explicarte, del lujo. Vos eras mi lujo, Anita. Pero no está en mí cambiar las cosas. Lo único que pudo hacer es pedirte que aceptes la realidad, y hagas lo más que pudas con lo que te quede vivir. Y ojalá suceda un milagro, y todo se arregle. Pero … (222)

The man's discourse metaphorically substitutes a “parte de mí”, “la parte del placer … del lujo” for “Ana”, implying that instead of being a separate person, she is a part of him and exists to give pleasure to him. Pozzi's request that Ana accept reality is ironic: what his discourse now implies through realidad directly contradicts his previous evaluation of her situation. Realidad in this context signifies a personal, mutable, interpretation of situations and events instead of an objective perspective.

In previous conversations, the absence of cancer in the characters' discourse revealed its presence to Ana; now the presence of “illness” signifies its absence. As Todorov states: “speech if true, is false, if false, is true … Words do not designate things but the contrary of things” (101–102). Language has come to indicate the opposite of what the speaker intends to express. The gap, or the difference, between Pozzi's earlier denial of Ana's illness and his new realidad replaces the word as the signifying act. This difference reveals language to be a manipulative tool rather than a means to signify a truth: by saying she is ill Pozzi is evoking the content of the sign, the implication of powerlessness and impending death that may facilitate his attempt to persuade her to act. Instead of allowing herself to be manipulated, the woman denies her illness, and refuses to call Alejandro.

Ana's last, critical conversation with Pozzi provokes or, perhaps, reveals profound changes in the woman's perspective; this development is further effected and expressed through the interplay and substitution of metaphoric signs. The final conversation with her lover is followed by a segment of the futuristic fantasy about W218 which relates a violent encounter between this young woman and her lover, LKJS. The government suspects that W218 will be able to read minds when she turns thirty, but she is unexpectedly able to do so when she turns twenty-one. The woman then over-hears her lover’s thoughts and learns that he is an enemy agent sent to kill her. The juxtaposition of this event and Ana's conversation with Pozzi suggests that W218's sudden ability to hear her lover's thoughts offers a metaphorical parallel to that incident.

W218 responds to her lover's betrayal with violence: she stabs him after they make love. When the courts find her guilty of attempted murder, W218 volunteers to provide sexual services to the terminally ill patients of the Hielos Eternos hospitals as punishment for her crime. After spending several months among the sick inmates, W218 succumbs to illness herself and is placed in a ward next to an old woman who is dying. This woman begins to relate her personal history to the W218:

no me quieren porque todas aquí están resignadas a morirse, menos yo … Lo que más rabia les da a estas ancianas apolilladas es que yo no me doy por vencida y hasta he intentado fugarme … sí, más de una vez. Por eso me tienen por loca. (264)

The old woman does not accept the common belief that illness signifies isolation at Hielos Eternos and eventual death. Because of her rejection of the content of this sign, she is labeled mad. The long monologue which follows is a narrative embedded within the narration of the fantasy, or in Genette's terms, a meta-metanarrative, which tells the story of a woman who did indeed escape from the hospital of Hielos Eternos in order to find her daughter. The woman begins narrating in the third person, in the past tense:

Se escapó con el camisón y nada más. Era una mujer joven, claro, y tan bella como tú. Y yo sé lo que pasó, a mí me lo han contado, no puedo decirte quien, pero sé lo que pasó. (265)

The physical description of the young woman suggests that there is a metaphoric relationship between her and W218. The narrative itself is an example of metonymic embedding: a story within a story within a story. The narration continues:

Y es que el frío, la locura, el viento, la audacia el hielo mismo, el ansia de ver a su hija, las estrellas, todo junto hizo que ella se desintegrara en el aire. Por eso nadie la pudo perseguir y traerla de vuelta. (265)

The old woman describes a fantastic escape from the hospital effected through the disintegration of the self. At this point in her narrative, the woman makes an abrupt switch from third person to first person: “De pronto se desató un viento extraño y el camisón se alzó, mostreándome desnuda” (266). She describes how the men around her trembled when they saw that she had a pubis angelical: “mi pubis era como el de los ángeles, sin vello y sin sexo, liso” (266). She describes her daughter:

y el viento le alzó la faldita y no cupo idea de que mi hija, poque también ella era un ángel puro. Y sólo entonces me di cuenta de por qué no me importaba más que ella en el mundo, de por qué la quería tanto, porque sería una mujer a la que ningún hombre podría rebajar! (267)

The sign being elaborated in this discourse, the pubis angelical, suggests the absence of female sexuality and of the concomitant vulnerability to men. The old woman ends her narration by saying:

y debe haber sido de la alegría que se me trastornó la cabeza, fue de la alegría que me volví loca … no le hagas caso a tu otra vecina de cama, no me quiere porque dice que estoy loca, y que soy peligrosa, no, yo nunca le hice nada a nadie, y me da furia nomás cuando me dicen que perdí la razón porque murió mi hija, que no es cierto, ella está viva, y me quiere … (267)

For the old woman, her madness is a result of happiness; the people around her believe that it is the result of grief. These contradicting points of view suggest a feminist critique of the word mad: the diagnosis of insanity is being used to discredit a woman whose vision of reality differs from the norm, who refuses to comply with the restriction placed upon her by society.¹¹ As she finishes the narrative, the other ill women “fijaban ojos burlones sobre la cama 27,” (267) but W218: “tuvo la sensación de que el relato era verídico.” (267)

This movement between grammatical persons in this meta-metanarrative, (it shifts from the third person to the first and is directed to a second person), corresponds to the parallels between the different women and suggests that they are all polivalent metaphors for the I. The old woman's discourse elaborates the metaphoric sign pubis angelical, a figure which opposes and supplants doll. This new sign suggests a rejection of, or escape from, illness and a corresponding invulnerability to men. It also suggests the inverse of the figure who appears to be a living woman but is revealed to be a mechanical doll; here the daughter is understood by others to be dead, but is known by the mother to be alive.

Immediately following the Hielos Eternos portion of the final fantasy Ana awakes from an operation that she did not know that she was scheduled for and finds Beatriz at her side. Beatriz tells her that it went well and that the doctors are optimistic about her future health:

quitaron el tumor, y la ramificación no era lo que se creía. La pudieron quitar toda. Estaba en el pulmón, la parte ramificada … Tienen la esperanza de que no reaparezcan más … brotes. (268)

Beatriz reports the doctors' findings, offering a description of the state of Ana's disease which is strikingly similar to that which Pozzi recounted earlier.¹² This time, however, the accompanying prognosis is optimistic. Ana is naturally hesitant to believe the doctors' hopeful evaluation of her condition as related by Beatriz: “Tengo miedo de que me engañes … o de no entender … lo que me decís …” (269) Because the truth of her illness has been hidden from her for so long, Ana now doubts the transparency of her friend's speech; language has come to signify the opposite of what the speaker wants it to signify. Ana's new attitude toward her disease, however, supersedes the question of whether or not the operation was truly successful. She asks Beatriz to immediately call her mother and daughter and ask them to come to Mexico to be with her. Beatriz responds to her request:

—Anita … lo que te dije de la operación es cierto también.

—No me importa … aunque me quede … poco tiempo, lo que me importa es alcanzar a verlas … otra vez.

—La vas a poder abrazar, bien fuerte.

—Más que abrazarlas … lo que quiero … es …

—Dime.

— …

—Dime ¿qué quieres?

—Más que abrazarlas, quiero … hablar con ellas, … y hasta pueda ser … que nos entendamos … (270)

Ana no longer cares about the prognosis for her illness, nor does she deny its existence as she did with Pozzi. Instead, she focuses her attention on the metaphorical signification of the disease—the state of separation and isolation, the inability to feel love or express anger, the fear of destruction—and she rejects these implications. She seeks to end the separation between herself and her mother and daughter which has characterized their relationship, and expresses hope that language will again function to communicate instead of to block communication; that not only will they speak to each other, but also understand one another.

Ana's final resistance to the accepted content of the metaphoric sign cancer represents a critical juncture in the trajectory of Puig's narrative: for the first time, an ill character rejects the symbolic content of her illness. Ana's refusal to accept the accepted implications of illness implies a much broader repudiation of societal norms, of the doll status traditionally accorded to women. She ultimately refuses to see herself as a broken doll that needs fixing, (a condition and a solution inextricably bound up with her female sexuality), and replaces that image with the vision of a woman with a pubis angelical, a self-sufficient figure who is invulnerable to men. In Ana's earlier fantasies, the woman's response to betrayal was to injure or kill the treacherous lover, inevitably destroying herself as well as the man.¹³ The sign pubis angelical replaces this violence with separation: instead of striking out at the man, the woman now closes herself off from him and seeks to regain a unity with other women.

In Pubis angelical, Puig denounces the traditional sexual roles implied by the metaphoric signs illness/cancer and health. He also addresses the complex, problematic nature of language, a system which often serves to obfuscate or manipulate rather than to communicate. As demonstrated by the text, the words health and illness, sanity and madness, are not neutral labels which reflect objective diagnoses, but rather powerful, political instruments which are used to maintain the sexual status quo. The prescription for getting better involves an awareness and repudiation of the metaphoric content of these signs.

Notes

1. Since the appearance of Manuel Puig's first novel, the role of alienation in his narrative has been the subject of much critical discussion. For example, Alicia Borinsky, in her article “Castration, Artifices, notes on the writing of Manuel Puig,” asserted that alienation is the structuring principle of La traición de Rita Hayworth.

2. Puig's interest in sexuality, power, and oppression has always been apparent in his narrative. His ideology, however, has become more organized and explicit with time. Puig, discussing the writing of La traición de Rita Hayworth with Ronald Christ, commented:

   In the first book I was dealing with the oppression of women, with a latent homosexual child growing up, and I didn't want to make any judgment about those cases. I just wanted to describe them. I didn't understand why the women were like that, or why the child was being modeled into a homosexual. But lately I've seen the motivation. Now I think I know. (60)

   Puig's concern with this motivation increased, and by his fourth novel, El beso de la mujer araña, both reviewers and author recognized the emergence of a critical, organized stance on the part of the narrator. At that time, Puig defined his own attitude to Danubio Torres Fierro saying:

   Estoy convencido de que el sexismo es un problema más grave que, por ejemplo, las determinantes económicas o las luchas laborales. La lucha por la liberación social tiene necesariamente que pasar por ahí. La escuela de la explotación está en la relación hombre-mujer. (512)

3. These trans-narrative systems are explored and analyzed in my doctoral dissertation, Transformation Metaphors in the Narrative of Manuel Puig. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1984.

4. Nueva Narrativa Hispánica edition (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1979). All further references are to this edition.

5. Bart L. Lewis, in Pubis angelical: La mujer codificada, discusses the actress and her daughter as “signos codificados” which offer metaphoric parallels to Ana, a “signo dinámico.” In his article, Lewis suggests that these women are “tres modelaciones de la mujer como víctima.” (531)

6. I have taken this explanation from Susan Sontag's excellent essay, Illness as Metaphor, in which she analyzes the metaphorization of tuberculosis, cancer, and mental illness.

7. Bart L. Lewis, in Pubis angelical: La mujer codificada, relates this doll imagery to the later image of the pubis angelical stating: “Las imágenes de la mujer como maquinaria exquisita, pubis angelical, canal erótico de un mensaje social, se comunican en las historias de la actriz y la mujer del futuro … La actriz es un icono cultural, represents la femineidad, pero es un cuerpo-canal, signo de una belleza unívoca, febril y doliente por ser perfecta.” (536) While doll certainly does imply a sexual objectification or codificación of the woman, the various mutations and transformations of the sign within the text suggest that the narrative vision of the actress and her daughter is complex and ambiguous.

8. Bart L. Lewis, 536.

9. In his essay Proust and Indirect Language, Genette discusses the different ways in which language, in attempting to conceal, reveals. He states: “Truth can be made apparent only when it is not said” (265). Tzvetan Todorov addresses this same issue in his essay “Speech according to Constant,” in which he explores the various relationships between speech and what it signifies, i.e. the symbolic relation, the synechdochic relation, and the case of self-reference (“the relation of signification is reduced to zero”), (90–91) Todorov asserts:

   “speech, if true, is false; if false is true. If we want to combine these two rules into one, we must say: words do not signify the presence of things but their absence.” (101)

10. Pozzi says to Ana: “¿Pero no te dabas cuenta que estás perdiendo peso, y que los dolores aumentan cada vez más?” Ana replies: “Yo no me daba cuenta.” (222)

11. Puig is clearly interested in the sign madness, as metaphor for difference and alienation, and as a diagnosis through which society censors non-conformist thought or behavior. In La traición de Rita Hayworth the piano teacher, Herminia, relates the story of El loco, a man who suddenly loses all sensation in his fingers, and is labeled mad by the townspeople. Their accusations are prophetic: when his lover betrays him, he loses his mind. Puig explores madness further in The Buenos Aires Affair.

12. Pozzi told Ana: “La probabilidad de salvarte es mínima … el tumor está en el estómago pero también en una parte del pulmón, ya está ramificado.” (221)

13. This recurring image of the woman who appears passive and vulnerable and who is revealed by a touch to be dangerous appears not only in Pubis angelical, but throughout Puig's first five novels: in La traición de Rita Hayworth, Toto touches his girlfriend Alicita and she turns into a crocodile; in Boquitas pintadas, Pancho is stabbed to death by his betrayed lover; in El beso de la mujer araña, Molina tells the story of cat women who turns into panthers upon being kissed. For a study of this ambiguous figure, see my doctoral dissertation; “Transformational Metaphors in the Narrative of Manuel Puig,” University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1984.

Works Cited

Borinsky, Alicia. “Castration, Artifices, notes on the writing of Manuel Puig.” Trans. Norman Holland and Stephen F. Houston. The Georgian Review 24 (Spring 1975): 4.

Christ, Ronald. “An Interview with Manuel Puig.” Partisan Review 44 (1977): 60.

Genette, Gerald. Figures of Literary Discourse. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Lewis, Bart. “Pubis angelical: La mujer codificada.” Revista Iberoamericana 49 (1983): 531–540.

Puig, Manuel. Pubis angelical. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1979.

Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor. New York: Random House, 1979.

Todorov, Tzvetan. The Poetics of Prose. Trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca, New York: The Cornell University Press, 1977.

Torres Fierro, Canubio. “Conversación con Manuel Puig; La redención de la cursilería.” Eco No. 173 (1975): 512.