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Modernization and the Phantasmagoria of
Commodities in Clarice Lispector’s
A cidade sitiada
LUCIA VILLARES
Clare College, Cambridge

Abstract
This article tries to explain the overwhelming presence of objects, or ‘things’, in
Clarice Lispector’s novel A cidade sitiada/The Besieged City (1949). I will interpret this,
taking into account the experience of what David Frisby has called ‘the phantasmagoria of the dream world of commodities’ and Marx’s notion of commodity
fetishism, understood as a ‘forgetting’ of the social relations of labour. I argue that,
in the context of Brazil, this necessarily involves a ‘forgetting’ of issues of race,
given that, in Brazil, modernization was driven by an ideology of whiteness: to
modernize was to whiten the nation. I will argue that Getúlio Vargas’s eugenic
perspective towards the modernizing nation is present in Lispector’s novel as an
unexamined but operational element in the cultural construction of a modern city
through the eyes of the protagonist Lucrécia.
Resumen
Este artigo tenta explicar a presença asfixiante de objetos, ou ‘coisas’, no romance A
Cidade Sitiada (1949) de Clarice Lispector. Para tal, lanço mão do conceito de ‘fantasmagoria do mundo das mercadorias’ desenvolvida por David Frisby e o conceito,
desenvolvido por Marx, de fetichismo da mercadoria, visto como um ‘esquecimento’
das relações sociais de trabalho. Argumento que, no contexto do Brasil, isto necessariamente inclui um ‘esquecimento’ de questões de raça, uma vez que, no Brasil, a
modernização foi norteada por uma ideologia de branquitude: modernizar a nação
era o mesmo que embranquecer a nação. Argumento também que a perspectiva
eugênica de Getúlio Vargas com relação à modernização da nação está presente no
romance de Lispector como um elemento não-examinado mas operacional, parte
do processo de construção cultural da cidade moderna através dos olhos da protagonista Lucrécia.
BHS 87.4 (2010) doi:10.3828/bhs.2010.13
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Lucia Villares
bhs, 87 (2010)
This article discusses the experience of what David Frisby (1985: 209) has called
‘the phantasmagoria of the dream world of commodities’ in Lispector’s novel A
cidade sitiada/The Besieged City (1949). I ground my reading of this novel in Marx’s
theory of commodity fetishism, understood as a ‘forgetting’ of the social relations of labour. I will argue that, in the context of Brazil, this necessarily involves
a ‘forgetting’ of issues of race, given that, in Brazil, modernization was driven by
an ideology of whiteness: to modernize was to whiten the nation.
Benedito Nunes summarizes A cidade sitiada as follows:
A Cidade Sitiada é a crônica de São Geraldo, um subúrbio em crescimento […]
Mocinha namoradeira à caça de um bom partido, e bairrista, [Lucrécia] passeia seu
tédio pela cidade, caminhando, de devaneio em devaneio, e nutrindo secretamente
a esperança de libertar-se dos muros imaginários que sitiam São Geraldo. Casa-se,
por fim, com um comerciante forasteiro que a transfere para a metrópole. Mas nem
os museus nem os jardins nem os teatros, que Lucrécia Neves visita turisticamente,
aplacam-lhe a nostalgia do subúrbio, para onde ela volta ainda na companhia do
marido, a quem detesta, pouco antes de tornar-se viúva séria, orgulhosa dos últimos
progressos da sua cidade. E à vista de um novo bom partido, ela deixará novamente
a terra natal. (1989: 32–33)
This is a very accurate description of the general sequence of events in the novel.
However, it ignores one aspect that becomes obvious to anyone who reads A
cidade sitiada: the overwhelming presence of objects, things, coisas surrounding
the protagonist Lucrécia. The presence of objects dominates not only the
fictional spaces but also the mind of the protagonist. These objects are seen
everywhere and are displayed to be seen. The protagonist is constantly surveying
her surroundings, aware of the fact that she, herself, is an object to be seen and
part of a wider landscape. As we shall see, there is a racial dimension behind the
excessive visibility. Commodity fetishism and the veil of appearances produced
by it create a hypervisibility which, in turn, obscures and conceals a situation of
racial exclusion. Unexamined whiteness presides over this veil of appearances,
leaving blackness in the position of the excluded Other. The result is a hypervisibility haunted by a sense of the uncanny.
There is a lack of separation between Lucrécia and the suburbs of São Geraldo,
where most of the story is set. Unlike many of Lispector’s characters, Lucrécia is
not critical of or in conflict with her surroundings. On the contrary, she merges
into the landscape, becoming another of its objects: ‘Mas na verdade sua futilidade era um despojamento severo e quando ela estivesse pronta pareceria um
objeto, um objeto de S. Geraldo. Era nisso que ela trabalhava ferozmente com
calma’ (Lispector 1998: 37).
However, it is interesting to note that Lucrécia is certainly not the only one
experiencing that. The bulk of the population of São Geraldo seems to be equally
unable to separate themselves from the transformations that affect their environment. A diffuse feeling of the uncanny permeates the descriptions of the
exterior scenes of São Geraldo. The reader gets a sense of something happening
that nobody can explain. This is obvious in the following passage: ‘Quanto mais
bhs, 87 (2010)
Clarice Lispector’s A cidade sitiada
fábricas se abriam nos arredores, mais o subúrbio se erguia em vida própria sem
que os habitantes pudessem dizer que transformação os atingia’ (1998: 16).
In terms of the relationship between the protagonist and the plot, the main
motor of action in A Cidade Sitiada is neither the protagonist nor any of the
other characters. Neither is it São Geraldo, the changing environment to which
Lucrécia belongs. The motor here is modernization itself. Modernization is
depicted as something extremely concrete and visible, but at the same time as a
force that works in a surreptitious way; a process that disrupts and disturbs the
relationship between individuals, social groups and physical environment.
The novel attempts to trace not just the impact of modernization on the
self, but how modernization itself depends on subjective constructions. As is
mentioned above, by contrast with the protagonists of Lispector’s other novels
– who experience deep subjective crises and engage in intense soul-searching
about who they are – Lucrécia is uncomplicated and seems to easily reflect, as
well as adapt to, her surroundings.
Although she cannot help doing so, Lucrécia is, to a certain extent, responsible for creating the transformation into which she is inserted. The importance
of Lucrécia’s gaze, the fact that she is so often described as seeing, looking and
being looked at – together with the fact that she needs to circulate in order to
be continuously perceived and to perceive – can be explained by the function
the character has in relation to the process of modernization itself. Lucrécia
functions as a transparent container for the environment undergoing urban
transformation; to create a city means to create internalized images of it: ‘Nesse
momento propício em que as pessoas viviam, cada vez que se visse – novas extensões emergiriam, e mais um sentido se criaria: isso era a pouco usável vida íntima
de Lucrécia Neves’ (1998: 23). In the process of registering the transformations
around her, Lucrécia needs to cope with an extraordinary amount of things
(coisas) – that invade her visual field, her domestic environment, the streets of
São Geraldo and the space of narration.
It is possible to explain why ‘things’ are so important in this novel if we
consider these objects as commodities in the context of what David Frisby, in
his analysis of Walter Benjamin’s work, has called ‘the phantasmagoria of the
dream world of commodities’ (1998: 209). This takes into account Marx’s theory
of commodity fetishism, understood as a ‘forgetting’ of the social relations of
labour.
In the context of Brazil, ‘forgetting social relations of labour’ necessarily
involves a ‘forgetting’ of issues of race. One needs to be aware that, in Brazil, the
process of modernization has been driven, since its beginning, by an ideology
of whiteness: to modernize the country has always been synonymous with
whitening the population. During the 1930s, particularly during the Vargas era
(1930–1945), which was a period of nation-building and strengthening of the
nation state, Brazil experienced important political and social changes. A cidade
sitiada was published in 1949, four years after the end of Vargas’s Estado Novo
(1937–1945). The theories of Gilberto Freyre, elaborated in the 1930s, provided
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Lucia Villares
bhs, 87 (2010)
a positive interpretation of the non-European ethnic elements in the country’s
population; with Freyre’s writings, the mestizo, until that date seen as a negative
element, ‘becomes the national’ (Ortiz 1985: 41). It has been shown that this
assimilation of the mestizo – promoted by Vargas’s government – has coexisted
in Brazil with a racism that is not institutionalized or explicit or verbalized, but
that is silent and dispersed through the fabric of daily life.
There is a clear link between Vargas’s modernizing policies and the ­whitening
of the Brazilian population. Studying the work of educational reformers in Rio de
Janeiro (then Brazil’s largest city) between 1917 and 1945, Jerry Dávila explains:
Brazilian elites […] believed their racially mixed nation already lacked the whiteness it needed to sustain its vitality. The task in hand, then, was to find new ways of
creating whiteness. […] white elites equated blackness with unhealthiness, laziness,
and criminality […]. Whiteness embodied the desired virtues of health, culture,
science and modernity.
[…] Whiteness was a way of affirming Europeanness, which in turn bore all
the trappings of modernity – from urbanization to industrialization, rationalism,
science and civic virtue. […] whiteness was also […] the absence of blackness. (2003:
5–6)
As we will see, the idea of the nation as racially homogeneous was an important
part of the ideology of the Vargas state. Lisa Shaw notes (1999: 32): ‘There can be
no doubt that Vargas did foster a sense of nationalism in keeping with the twentieth century and the modern state that he founded’. She quotes the following
speech delivered by Vargas in 1938, in which he describes the nation in eugenic
terms:
A prompt solution must be given to the problem of strengthening the race, assuring
the cultural and eugenic preparation of the new generations … The commemorations for the Fatherland and Race ought to be from now on an unequivocal demonstration of our effort to raise the cultural and eugenic level of youth … For a Brazil
united, for a Brazil strong, for a Brazil great. (Cited in Shaw 1999: 32)
I will argue that Vargas’s eugenic perspective on modernizing the nation is
present in Lispector’s novel as an unexamined but operational element in the
cultural construction of a modern city through the eyes of the protagonist
Lucrécia. The notion of race is an intrinsic part of the ideology of modernization
– crystallized in Lucrécia’s perception of the city as an impenetrable fortress of
commodified objects.
E a dureza das coisas era o modo mais recortado de ver da moça. Da impossibilidade
de ultrapassar essa resistência nascia, de fruto verde, o travo das coisas firmes sobre
as quais soprava com heroísmo este vento cívico que faz tremer bandeiras! A cidade
era uma fortaleza inconquistável! E ela procurando ao menos imitar o que via: as
coisas estavam como ali! E ali! Mas era preciso repeti-las. A moça tentava repetir
com os olhos o que via, tal seria o único modo de se apoderar. (Lispector 1998: 49)
Lucrécia’s experience of these uncanny objects as an impenetrable, monolithic
presence (‘a dureza das coisas’, ‘o travo das coisas firmes’) is linked to the fact
bhs, 87 (2010)
Clarice Lispector’s A cidade sitiada
that modernization in Brazil becomes an ideology: a set of ideas imposed upon
people. The novel is thus stressing a feature of modernity that would become
explicit in Brazil at a later date, after the 1964 coup and the so-called ‘Milagre
Econômico’: modernization as a form of domination. It is interesting to note
that the narrative is, in fact, set in the 1920s, the decade of the modernist avantgarde in Brazil, a period when the idea of modernity could still suggest the possibility of social change and positive transformation. This avant-garde period is
represented in the novel by the futuristic use of feminine figures as an expression of physical strength and vigour, expressing faith and belief in progress. This
is present, for example, in the description of the façade of a modernist building:
‘Três mulheres de pedra sustentavam a portada do edifício modernista que uns
andaimes ainda obstruíam’ (1998: 17).
The novel contrasts this utopian aspect of the modernist avant-garde with a
less optimistic perception of modernization. Renato Ortiz explains how in Brazil,
especially after 1964, modernity became ‘uncritical’: no longer a drive to change
the present, but a set of regulatory norms.
[Modernity] is no longer a utopia, something out of step with time. […] I would say
that it becomes ideology, that is, a vision of the world which merely seeks adaptation to the present. In this sense acritical modernity requires the adjustment of
people and political proposals to its interests. ‘Backward’ is that which is out of tune
with the existing order. (2000: 142)
In other words, the modernizing impetus of the period from the 1930s to the
early 1980s – which includes the period when Lispector was writing – was, to
a great extent, one imposed upon the population rather than one inspired by
local needs or aspirations. Although she is writing about later decades, Vivian
Schelling makes a similar point:
with the rapid economic growth brought about by the military governments of the
1970s and ‘80s and the establishment of significant culture industries, particularly
in Brazil and Mexico, modernity ceased in many ways to be an unrealised aspiration and became instead part of the fabric of everyday life. It is important to note,
however, that the notion and practice of modernity which tended to prevail in this
process of transformation was predominantly instrumental and acritical. (2000: 13)
Modernity becomes an ‘existing order’ imposed from above, to which the individual needs to conform. As Schelling notes: ‘In the 1990s, with the growing
integration of Latin America into global markets and the adoption of neoliberal economic thinking as the dominant paradigm, this technocratic conception of modernity has become increasingly hegemonic’ (2000: 13). In this sense,
Lispector, writing in 1949, is anticipating the critique that would start to be
formulated many decades later in Brazil, after the ‘Milagre Econômico’ of the
1970s.
Lucrécia’s perception of objects as an impenetrable fortress is a metaphor
for an ideology of modernization that included, as I said, an important racial
dimension.
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One of the few references to black people in this novel is an ambivalent one.
It appears in its opening pages, in the form of a black face which emerges from
a coal depot (carvoaria). This is how it reads: ‘Da Carvoaria Coroa de Ferro saiu
uma cara negra de olhos brancos’ (Lispector 1998: 18). It is not clear from this
reference to blackness whether the individual is black, i.e. Afro-Brazilian, or a
white man whose face is blackened with coal dust. The image, however, is very
suggestive and could be interpreted as an allegory for the concept of race.
Critics have called our attention to the allegorical nature of this novel.
Benedito Nunes explains this allegorical aspect very well:
Não tem A cidade sitiada, enquanto crônica de um subúrbio em transformação, o
sentido de uma forma de vida completa, que integre a experiência individual dos
personagens. É uma alegoria das mudanças no tempo dos indivíduos e das coisas
que os rodeiam. Lucrécia Neves personifica essa abstração romanesca. (1989: 38)
Other critics have commented on this novel’s high level of abstraction. Elizabeth
Lowe, for example, says: ‘Lispector’s third novel is one of her most difficult to
approach critically. […] thematically, the novel is one of her most abstract’ (1993:
25). Carlos Mendes de Sousa describes the novel as having a ‘denso penhor figurativo’ (de Souza 2000: 234).
Bearing this allegorical quality in mind, one could interpret the Afro-Brazilian
ethnic marker mentioned above (the black face that emerges from a coal depot)
not simply as a description of a particular character’s face at a particular fictional
moment, but as a visual representation of the concept of race itself. It also
shows how the concept of race operates by influencing how people perceive and
construct social realities. Paul Gilroy, discussing the concept of race, quotes Eric
Voegelin as saying that ‘It is not the function of an idea to describe reality but
to assist in its constitution’ (Gilroy, 2000: 57). Race therefore becomes ‘an active,
dynamic idea or principle that assists the constitution of social reality’ (58). The
image of a face that is ‘blacked up’ (smeared with coal, regardless of whether the
face underneath is white or black) can be seen as a visual representation of the
concept of race insofar as race is nothing other than a set of meanings imposed
on a particular skin colour.
Coal is an important element in this image, as it represented the source of
energy for the primary phases of industrialization. The suburbs of São Geraldo
are described as ‘O subúrbio de carvão e ferro’ (Lispector 1998: 19). As a black
substance, coal could also represent blackness in the form of the labour force
made socially invisible, underpinning the process of modernization, conceived
in terms of whiteness. Here, we should bear in mind that, as we have seen, in
Brazil blacks were excluded from the industrial workforce, which was made up
of white immigrants and mulattos. Blacks were associated with the rural past
and seen as not having a place in modernization or modernity.
Later in the novel Lucrécia confronts a mysterious visitor in her house, who
appears to announce the arrival of a ship loaded with coal. Lucrécia seems to be
disturbed by this presence and by the idea of another load of coal. This stranger
bhs, 87 (2010)
Clarice Lispector’s A cidade sitiada
also looks at the knick-nacks in Lucrécia’s house, despising the whiteness of the
porcelain, drawing a contrast between the blackness of the coal that he comes to
announce and the whiteness of the objects that surround Lucrécia. This is how
the scene develops:
Quando pensou que ele nunca falaria, o visitante disse sobre a barba ensopada:
– Chegou, Lucrécia, já chegou o navio.
[…]
– Bem carregado?
O homem olhou com certa hesitação.
Sempre o mesmo. Carvão. Sempre carvão.
Lucrécia mantinha-se retesada.
– Pode ir então, […] pode ir, não interessa.
Não era esse o carregamento, não era essa a notícia! […] Mas o homem agora fitava
com força os bibelôs, e sem sorrir desprezava a brancura fresca da porcelana.
– É carvão, repetiu alçando os ombros com ironia, é carvão ….
– Vá embora, ordenou com firmeza. (Lispector 1998: 76)
Lucrécia does not want to know about the coal. One could argue that the blackness of coal – together with its relationship to productive energy and labour
– were elements that had to remain outside Lucrécia’s mental universe. Her
mind, dominated by the veil of appearances of commodities (many of them of
European origin, as we shall see) could not accommodate this black (and dirty)
element – that is, the evidence of the primary transformative labour processes
that lay behind the production of capitalist modernity and its commodities.
In the following passage we can see that the objects that Lucrécia and her
mother collect at home are described as being more than private possessions.
An imagined auction (‘leilão’) reveals the real nature of these objects (‘os objetos
seriam escancarados’): they are commodities, objects that can be sold. An imaginary wind is about to blow and expose those private possessions to the outside
world. The borders between the private and the public world are placed at risk.
O aposento era repleto de jarros, bibelôs, cadeiras e paninhos de crochê, e nas paredes
de papel florido amontoavam-se folhas recortadas de revistas e antigos calendários.
O ar sufocado e puro de lugares sempre fechados, o cheiro das coisas. Mas em pouco
começaria o leilão e os objetos seriam escancarados? Nada impediria mesmo que a
porta se abrisse – o vento prenunciava portas bruscamente espalancadas. (1998: 70)
In another passage these private objects are described as existing on a plane
‘above’ their materiality, having lost their function (use value) by becoming signs
(‘sinais de telegrama’). This domestic interior is equated with the suburbs themselves (‘este era o subúrbio’), suggesting that the situation described as private
is, in reality, part of a wider context:
eis a mesa no escuro. Elevada acima de si mesma pela sua falta de função. […] sinais de
telegrama. Eis a forma alçada da mesinha. Quando uma coisa não pensava, a forma
que possuía era o seu pensamento. O peixe era o único pensamento do peixe. O que
dizer então da chaminé. Ou daquela folhinha de calendário que o vento arrepiava.
Ah sim, Lucrécia Neves via tudo.
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Lucia Villares
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[…] O segredo das coisas estava em que, manifestando-se, se manifestavam iguais a elas
mesmas.
Assim era. E esfregando o sapato, a moça olhou esse mundo escuro repleto de
bilelôs, da flor, da única flor do jarro: este era o subúrbio – ela engraxava furiosamente. (1998: 71, my emphasis)
This abstraction of things from their material function, or use-value, corresponds closely to Karl Marx’s analysis of the commodity under capitalism in
‘The Fetishism of Commodities’:
A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its
analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing […]. So far as it is a value
in use, there is nothing mysterious about it […] But, so soon as it steps forth as a
commodity, it is changed into something transcendent […]. The mystical character
of commodities does not originate, therefore, in their use-value. (1977: 435)
In the following passage Marx explains the mystical character of commodities:
A commodity is […] a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of
men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product
of that labour; […]. There is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in
their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. (436)
Marx concludes by saying that commodities ‘appear as independent beings
endowed with life’ (436). In the case of Lucrécia and her mother, we can see that
they surround themselves with ornaments, objects that have been deprived of
their use-value and which become somehow magically animated: ‘Os bibelôs
luziam em claridade própria como animais da profundeza. A sala estava íntima,
fantástica, o interior sufocado de sonho… Por todo o aposento coisas inocentes se
haviam espalhado em guarda’ (Lispector 1998: 76–77).
By persisting in looking at and tracing the presence of objects around her,
Lucrécia creates a dreamy atmosphere around herself that could be seen as
typical of Frisby’s ‘phantasmagoria of the dream world of commodities’ (1985:
209). As Frisby notes:
The world of the circulation of the commodity is precisely the announcement of the
new as the ever-same. The dream world of the nineteenth century presents itself
as a mortified world of things, a world of reifications that are cut off from their
origins. Benjamin’s task was to go in search of the secrets of these often ephemeral things that are left behind by that century. The conception of the ‘dreaming
collectivity’ in the nineteenth century, enclosed in the fantasy world of commodity
fetishism and false consciousness, requires an equally important notion, that of the
awakening from the dream. (1985: 210)
Lispector does not depict or suggest in her novel Lucrécia’s awakening from
this dream; rather, she emphasizes Lucrécia’s immersion in this dreamy atmosphere. Lucrécia’s private world is dominated by the presence of these objects;
they are clearly instrumental in the construction of her domestic environment.
Walter Benjamin’s description of the bourgeois collector surrounding himself
with commodities is relevant here:
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Clarice Lispector’s A cidade sitiada
For the private citizen, for the first time the living space became distinguished
from the place of work. The former constituted itself as the interior. The office was
its complement. The private citizen who in the office took reality into account,
required of the interior that it should support him in his illusions. This necessity
was all the more pressing since he had no intention of adding social preoccupations
to his business ones. In the creation of his private environment he suppressed them
both. From this sprang the phantasmagorias of the interior.
[…]
The interior was the place of refuge of Art. The collector was the true inhabitant
of the interior. He made the glorification of things his concern. To him fell the
task of Sisyphus which consisted of stripping things of their commodity character
by means of his possession of them. But he conferred upon them only a fancier’s
value, rather than an use-value. […] The interior was not only the private citizen’s
universe, it was also its casing. (1989: 167–69)
Benjamin highlights the fact that the bourgeois is not interested in the connection between these objects and the society that produces them. Similarly,
Lucrécia is not aware of the social relationships contained in the objects that
surround her; the social isolation that Benjamin describes is also relevant in this
case. However, in Lispector’s novel this situation is presented in a rather ambivalent way. Lucrécia, without really understanding what she sees, describes these
objects as part of a wider environment. In the following passage, for example,
her friend Perseu insists that the objects must belong to someone. Lucrécia is
adamant in pointing out that they are part of a wider context. This is how the
passage goes:
Perseu […] continuou a examinar em torno, parando o olhar sobre um ou outro
bibelô como se de repente os estranhasse […]. Afinal percebeu que Lucrécia o
observava e perturbou-se:
– São seus…, perguntou apontando com o rosto.
– Da sala.
Ele a olhou com surpresa e alegria.
– Que tolice! As coisas são de pessoas!
– Da sala, resmungou Lucrécia Neves.
– E a sala, filhinha?
– É da casa, a casa é de S. Geraldo, não me aborreça. (Lispector 1998: 112)
Because Lucrécia does not see herself as separate from São Geraldo, this connection between private objects and a wider social environment is presented to the
readers in an uncomplicated, matter-of-fact manner. What is obviously disturbing
– and probably upsetting for Perseu – is the lack of agency that this situation
presents. In the midst of this phantasmagoria of commodities, Lucrécia has lost
her individuality and any power to act upon or transform her environment. She
can only follow the flow of change in which she is immersed. The novel highlights, through the eyes of Lucrécia, a situation where people are connected but
do not understand these connections and therefore cannot resist them.
The commodity nature of the objects that surround Lucrécia, stripped of
their use-value, becomes evident if we compare Lucrécia and another female
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character in this novel, the elderly Efigênia. Unlike Lucrécia, Efigênia resists
­modernization:
Apesar do progresso o subúrbio conservava lugares quase desertos […]. E também
havia pessoas que […] ganhavam agora certa importância apenas por se recusarem à
nova era. A velha Efigênia […] [q]uando lhe morrera o marido continuara a manter o
pequeno curral, não querendo misturar-se ao pecado nascente. (1998: 19–20)
The passage describing Efigênia’s interaction with her environment emphasizes
how she changes her environment through her labour. This grants to Efigênia
the position of a subject: she is empowered to act upon nature.
Efigênia se levantava com esforço, recuperava a forma seca e entrava na cozinha.
As panelas estavam frias, e o fogão morto. Em breve a chama se erguia, a fumaça
enchia o compartimento e a mulher tossia com os olhos cheios de lágrimas, abrindo
a porta dos fundos e cuspindo.
A terra do quintal estava dura. No espaço, o arame de estender roupa. (29–30)
The space in which Efigência is situated is strikingly different from that in which
Lucrécia is located. Instead of bibelots, Efigênia’s space contains objects which
she puts to use: the wire is for drying clothes, the oven heats her coffee, the cold
saucepans suggest that they had been hot, having been used. In contrast with
Lucrécia, Efigênia is effective in transforming her environment:
Voltava para a cozinha, tomava vários goles de café soprando, tossindo, cuspindo,
enchendo-se do primeiro calor. Então abria a porta e a fumaça se libertava. De pé da
soleira da porta, sem súplica, sem perdão.
[…] A mulher cuspia longe com mais segurança, as mãos na cintura. Sua dureza
de jóia. O arame se balançava sobre o peso de um pardal. Ela cuspia de novo, ríspida,
feliz. O trabalho de seu espírito tinha sido feito: era dia. (30)
The passage describing Efigênia’s interaction with her environment emphasizes
how she changes her environment through her labour. Her physical efforts and
interaction with nature are clear: she coughs and cries because of the smoke in
order to make fire and transform her surroundings. Here, the dawning of a new
day is not a natural event but, indeed, the result of Efigênia’s spiritual labour
(‘O trabalho de seu espírito tinha sido feito: era dia’). Efigênia is, therefore, an
empowered subject.
The contrast between the characters of Efigênia and Lucrécia illustrates clearly
Lucrécia’s alienation in Marxist terms. István Mészáros, quoting Marx, explains
the importance of human labour in Marx’s understanding of the human ­condition:
Human activities and needs of a ‘spiritual’ kind thus have their ultimate ontological foundation in the sphere of material production as specific expressions of
human interchange with nature, mediated in complex ways and forms. As Marx
puts it: ‘the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the begetting of
man through human labour, nothing but the coming-to-be [Werden] of nature for
man’. Productive activity is the mediator in the ‘subject-object relationship’ between
man and nature. A mediator that enables man to lead a human mode of existence,
ensuring that he does not fall back into nature, does not dissolve himself within the
‘object’. (Mészáros 1975: 80–81)
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Clarice Lispector’s A cidade sitiada
Unlike Efigênia, Lucrécia is objectified, reified, alienated. Mészáros explains this
notion of alienation, quoting Marx’s words:
Productive activity in the form dominated by capitalist isolation – when ‘men
produce as dispersed atoms without consciousness of their species’ – cannot
adequately fulfil the function of mediating man with nature because it ‘reifies’ man
and his relations and reduces him to the ‘state of animal nature’. In place of man’s
‘consciousness of his species’ we find a cult of privacy and an idealization of the
abstract individual. (1975: 81)
Lucrécia does not need to work in order to earn a living. First, as a spinster she
seems to live off her mother’s capital. Later on, Lucrécia’s decision to marry
the older businessman Mateus is clearly motivated by financial interests. Before
Lucrécia’s commitment to Mateus, her mother says: ‘Se você casasse com ele
teria muitas coisas, chapéus, jóias, morar bem, sair deste buraco… ter uma casa
bem guarnecida…’ (Lispector 1998: 110). Lucrécia, apparently, agrees with her
mother ‘Mas não era nenhuma ingênua sacrificada. Lucrécia Neves desejava
ser rica, possuir coisas e subir de ambiente’ (119). Lucrécia’s isolation and her
obsession with her private world show that she is clearly not ‘conscious of her
species’, to use Marx’s phrase. We can say that she is a victim of the capitalist
isolation and alienation described above by Mészáros.
Lucrécia’s alienation, however, is symbolic. The emphasis we have seen on
her private domestic world is important here because it is symbolic of the ideological modernization she is immersed in. Her function is to reflect the world of
appearances that surrounds her and from which she can barely be separated. To
fulfil this function Lucrécia needs to circulate, to walk in the suburbs, to see and
to be seen on the streets. While walking around she represents São Geraldo. The
protagonist works intensively to be part of this spectacle of modernity, exhibiting herself like an object: ‘quando ela estivesse pronta pareceria um objeto, um
objeto de S. Geraldo. Era nisso que ela trabalhava ferozmente com calma’ (37).
The most striking evidence of the symbolic function of Lucrécia – and of
her passive and reified situation – is an extraordinary passage located in the
fourth chapter. Here the reader follows in detail Lucrécia’s metamorphosis into
a statue. The reader can follow the process whereby Lucrécia, alone in her house,
places her body in a very uncomfortable position, loses the ability to speak and
becomes rigid.
The passage ends with the following words:
E assim ficou como se a tivessem depositado. Distraída, sem nenhuma individualidade.
Sua arte era popular e anônima. […]
Na posição em que estava, Lucrécia Neves poderia mesmo ser transportada à
praça pública. […] Por que era assim que uma estátua pertencia à cidade. (Lispector
1998: 80)
The metaphor of Lucrécia as a statue representing São Geraldo is symbolic of what
we have been discussing: her submersion into the dream world of ­commodities
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transforms her into a symbol of this social space under construction; she is part
and parcel of São Geraldo.
We have seen that the veil of appearances under which Lucrécia is submerged
constitutes, in fact, her reality. As a consequence, visibility (looking and being
looked at), together with appearances and the physical presence of objects,
becomes paramount in this novel: ‘E não havia outro modo de conhecer o
subúrbio; S. Geraldo era explorável apenas pelo olhar. Também Lucrécia Neves
de pé espiava a cidade’ (24). By seeing and naming things, Lucrécia plays an
important role in giving shape to a new social reality:
tudo o que ela via era alguma coisa. Nela e num cavalo a impressão era a expressão.
Na verdade função bem tosca – ela indicava o nome íntimo das coisas, ela, os cavalos
e alguns outros; e mais tarde as coisas seriam olhadas por este nome. A realidade
precisava da mocinha para ter uma forma. ‘O que se vê’ – era a sua única vida interior; o que se via tornou-se a sua vaga história. […] A cidade ia tomando a forma que
o seu olhar revelava. (1998: 23)
The following passage also describes the process by which Lucrécia is actually
constructing her surroundings: ‘Tudo o que via se tornava real. Olhando agora,
sem ânsia, o horizonte cortado de chaminés e telhados. O difícil é que a aparência
era a realidade’ (101). This last phrase (‘O difícil era que a aparência era a realidade’ is crucial for an understanding of the novel. We could interpret this reality
of appearances as a language of visual (and virtual) signs, a language of modernization that is imposed upon the social environment, disguising and concealing
some of its aspects. Marx refers to commodities as social hieroglyphs, comparing
them to a language:
It is value […] that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic. Later on we try
to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social products, for
to stamp an object of utility as a value is just as much a social product as language.
[…] It is, however, just this ultimate money-form of the world of commodities that
actually conceals, instead of disclosing, the social character of private labour, and
the social relations between the individual producers. (1977: 436–39)
This novel describes the construction of a modernized environment as an active
language of signs: visual images that do not reveal, but cover and conceal, other
aspects of reality. What exactly are these visual images concealing? How does
race articulate with this process?
If Marx analysed how, in nineteenth-century European capitalism, com­­­
modities concealed the social relations of labour, the situation in early
­twentieth-century Brazil is complicated by the ethnic composition of the
industrial labour force, in which blacks were not a major element. Jessé Souza
explains this:
Quem ocupa os novos empregos abertos pelo desenvolvimento de manufaturas
e maquinofaturas é o mulato e depois o imigrante europeu. O negro, vítima de
preconceito e do seu próprio abandono, não teve nem terá acesso mais tarde ao lado
menos sombrio dos novos tempos. (de Souza 2000: 265)
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Clarice Lispector’s A cidade sitiada
Marx has shown that in nineteenth-century European capitalism, the fetishism
of commodities concealed relations of labour and the role of the working class
in society. The gulf between the phantasmagoria of commodities perceived by
Lucrécia as the main feature of her social reality and the mass of Afro-Brazilian
social pariahs, associated with an obsolete form of rural plantation labour, is
wider here than that perceived by Marx in relation to the industrial worker.
It is important to note also that the knick-knacks surrounding Lucrécia and
her mother, Ana, are explicitly connected to a European environment: ‘Abafadores de bule amarelecendo, o passarinho empalhado, a caixa de madeira com
vista dos Alpes na tampa, eram a presença minuciosa de Ana’ (Lispector 1998:
63). We must remember that Neves (‘snow’) – the surname of Lucrécia and Ana,
is also linked to whiteness and to the European environment of the Alps. This
reinforces the racial element in these objects: the unexamined whiteness that
these commodities contain.
One also needs to be aware that, while surrounded by and looking at these
objects, neither Lucrécia nor Ana were ever able to look straight at them,
suggesting that part of these objects had to remain unseen: ‘a sala e Ana a
rodeavam radiantes, as xícaras faiscando, a vista dos Alpes em extraordinária
evidência, nada porém podendo ser olhado de frente’ (63; my emphasis). The need
to avoid looking at reality face-on suggests that parts of this reality need to be
avoided, left outside consciousness. The following passage points to the existence of something unspeakable – indeed, unthinkable – in the cultural context
of São Geraldo: ‘As pessoas se debruçavam e adivinhavam-na através do crepúsculo: lá… lá estava o subúrbio estendido. E o que elas viam era o pensamento que
elas nunca poderiam pensar’ (24).
This veil of extreme visibility that Lucrécia is constructing is intrinsically
connected to the nation. We have seen, in the epigraph to this chapter, that
these objects are buffeted by a civic wind and connected to the image of a flag.
It is useful to repeat the relevant extract here: ‘o travo das coisas firmes sobre as
quais soprava com heroísmo este vento cívico que faz tremer bandeiras!’ (1998:
48; 49). By circulating, seeing and being seen, Lucrécia is engaging in the construction of an idea of the nation: ‘Ela era como essas pessoas estrangeiras que
diziam: “no meu país é assim” […] ela parecia protegida por uma raça de pessoas
iguais’ (1998: 45–46).
But this construction of the nation is informed by the politics of race and colour,
which complicates her self-construction as a national ‘citizen’; in practice, the
nation is not made up of ‘uma raça de pessoas iguais’. In the following sequence,
when Lucrécia comes back from a walk around in São Geraldo, she is described
as a ‘horrible’ patriot: ‘Feia, desmanchada sob os cabelos arrepiados, fungando
de vez em quando […]. Mas também permanecia inteira – lutava sem se gastar,
ela era horrível, a patriota’ (1998: 62).
Before going out Lucrécia has composed herself in front of a mirror. It is
important to note that the preparation Lispector has undertaken has not been
exempt from racial implications. The text describes the protagonist’s physique
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precisely: ‘Era basta a cabeleira onde pousava o chapéu fantástico; e tantos
sinais negros espalhados na luz da pele davam-lhe um tom externo a ser tocado
pelos dedos’ (1998: 36). Lispector chooses the word ‘sinais’ (signs) to describe the
black marks on the protagonist’s skin, instead of the synonyms ‘manchas’ or
‘pintas’; the words ‘signs’ implies that they were more than just physical traces,
there were meanings attached to them. Intriguingly, these marks seem to make
Lucrécia more prone to being touched and, therefore, less protected from sexual
approaches. The narrator shows Lucrécia, in her attempt to see herself as beautiful, looking at herself rather vaguely and then finding a bit of unblemished
white skin, in order to be able to consider herself pretty:
Inclinou-se de súbito para o espelho, e procurou achar o modo de se ver mais bela,
abriu a boca, olhos os dentes, fechou-a … Em breve, do olhar fixo, nascia afinal a
maneira de não penetrar demais e de olhar em esforço delicado apenas a superfície
– e de rapidamente não olhar mais. A moça olhou: as orelhas eram brancas entre os
cabelos emaranhados de onde nascia um rosto que os sinais salpicados faziam estremecer
– e sem demorar, porque alcançaria demais ultrapassando: este era o modo de se ver
mais bela! (Lispector 1998: 37; my emphasis)
The last italicized words are relevant (‘alcançaria demais ultrapassando’). What
would Lucrécia be ‘overtaking’ (‘ultrapassando’) if she had not moved her eyes
away from her image? A notion of beauty depending on a certain kind of skin
colour? An unexamined colour line? What would she be ‘reaching’ (‘alcançaria’)
by so doing? An unbearable perception? Why do the black signs make her face
tremble (‘um rosto que os sinais salpicados faziam estremecer’)? Here again we
see the need to avoid looking straight at things. There is a need to preserve this
veil of appearances, making sure that part of the reality remains unseen. The
mention of blackness in this passage suggests that the racial elements of this veil
have to remain unexamined.
Expanding on Marx’s idea of the fetishism of commodities, we could say
that Lispector is depicting, through the eyes of Lucrécia, a veil of appearances,
a covering and seductive world of circulating objects, crowds, markets, streets,
where, however, something remains unseen, outside this language. In the above
quotation, Marx refers to a ‘world of commodities that actually conceals, instead
of disclosing, the social character of private labour, and the social relations
between the individual producers’ (1977: 439).
As we have seen, Lucrécia’s experience of modernity as a phantasmagoria of
commodities contains important racial dimensions. Lucrécia’s complex relationship with the objects around her reveals important unexamined aspects of the
modernizing process in early twentieth-century Brazil. It is precisely because she
is immersed uncritically in her surroundings that Lucrécia is extremely efficient
in revealing how, in the early decades of the twentieth century, the ideology of
1
modernization affected everyday experience in urban Brazil.
1 Material from this article will also be published in my forthcoming book, Examining Whiteness: Reading Clarice Lispector through Bessie Head and Toni Morrison, to be published by Legenda
in summer 2010.
Clarice Lispector’s A cidade sitiada
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