Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies

Vol. 14, Nos 2 3, August/December 2008, 7785

Racism and the performance of whiteness in A hora da estrela

Lucia Villares*
Department of Modern Languages, University of Oxford, UK

In this article I will examine the presence of racism and the need to perform whiteness in Clarice
Lispectors novel A hora da estrela (The Hour of the Star) (1977). This short novel depicts the
struggles of a young girl from the Northeast, Macabea, as she tries to survive and make a living
in the big metropolis of Rio de Janeiro. Macabea, who is very poor and ill-adapted to the city,
works in an office as a typist. One day she encounters Olmpico, a steelworker and also an
immigrant from the Northeast. They start going out together, but soon Olmpico loses interest in
Macabea and becomes attracted to Gloria, her mulatta colleague.
But what of the way Macabeas racial characteristics are narrated? Macabea is clearly not fit
to live in this urban, modern world she is portrayed as uma moca numa cidade toda feita
contra ela (Lispector 1999, p. 15) and visibility plays a crucial role in her characterisation.
So much of what Macabea is derives from the way she looks, or rather the way she does not look.
Her body is an accumulation of minuses, of lacks, of negative attributes. She is too thin, too
dirty, too ugly, she does not have what one might call encanto. Macabea is physically not fit for
the world in which she lives and a lot of this is due to the fact that her colour is wrong: as Homi
Bhabha would say, she is white, but not quite.1 Her skin colour is perceived as dirty and she is
often described as yellowish: Se sei quase tudo de Macabea e que ja peguei uma vez de relance
o olhar de uma nordestina amarelada (1999, p. 57).
At a certain moment in the narrative Macabea expresses to Olmpico her wish to look like
Marilyn Monroe, emphasising the all over pink colour of Monroes body. This is how the
dialogue develops:
Sabe o que eu mais queria na vida? Pois era ser artista de cinema . . . Sabe que Marylin era toda
cor-de-rosa?
E voce tem cor de suja. Nem tem rosto nem corpo para ser artista de cinema.
Voce acha mesmo?
Ta na cara. (1999, pp. 53 54)

Macabea seems to be strangely immune to Olmpicos brutal dismissal of her ambitions.

The expression Ta na cara suggests something utterly obvious that everybody else save
Macabea can understand. Macabea, however, continues as if his words could not touch her.
Something stronger than Olmpicos verbal brutality attaches Macabea to what the reader
perceives as her illusions. Later in the novel something similar will happen. When Macabea
explains to her colleague Gloria her ambition of looking like Marilyn, Gloria reacts in the same
way: Logo ela, Maca? Ve se te manca! (1999, p. 64). Glorias comment, although not as
brutal as Olmpicos, reverberates along the same lines in the readers mind, reiterating the

*Email: lucia.villares@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk
ISSN 1470-1847 print/ISSN 1469-9524 online
q 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14701840802543761
http://www.informaworld.com

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L. Villares

inadequacy of Macabeas body. The expression Ve se te manca! is almost a synonym of Ta na

cara, tantamount to saying Cant you see it? Its obvious. Thus both Olmpico and Gloria insist
that Macabeas inadequacy is obvious and visible. This is, in reality, the definition of racist
thinking: the attribution of psychological and moral values to certain physical features, skin
colour being an example. Macabea could never aspire to be a movie star because of a bodily
inadequacy: her social and psychological limitations are obvious to anyone who looks at her.
Of course, the inadequacy does not reside in Macabeas physical appearance, but in the
cultural conditioning of those looking at her. As Matthew Frye Jacobson puts it, race is not just a
conception; it is also a perception (Jacobson 1998 p. 9,). Jacobson quotes Ruth Benedict to the
effect that in racial thinking the eye that sees is not a mere physical organ but a means of
perception conditioned by the tradition in which the possessor has been reared (Benedict,
quoted in Jacobson 1998, p. 10). The problem is not Macabea nor the way she looks, but the
framework through which she is perceived.
The text draws our attention to the extent to which our identities and our subjectivities
depend on visible features. As Linda Schlossberg explains:
Theories and practices of identity and subject formation are largely structured around a logic of
visibility . . . At the most basic level, we are subjects constituted by our visions of ourselves and
others and we trust that our ability to see and read carries with it a certain degree of epistemological
certainty. (Schlossberg 2001, p. 4)

Furthermore, the control of what is visible the highlighting of some features and the
concealment of others permits the process of passing, the process by which a person
succeeds in being perceived as part of a specific group from which they would normally be
excluded, by performing the visual attributes associated with that group (for example, women
masquerading as men, or black or mixed-race people masquerading as white, etc.). While
Macabea obviously does not pass, Gloria as we will see later in more detail disguises her
African origins and controls this process efficiently enough to impress Olmpico. At a certain
point he depicts Gloria as material de boa qualidade in contrast to Macabea, who is seen as not
having forca de raca, of being a subproduto (1999, p. 59). Olmpicos comments rely on an
essential connection between Macabeas physical appearance and her personal identity. In other
words, he appears to believe in what Schlossberg identifies as the seemingly intimate
relationship between the visual and the known (Schlossberg 2001, p. 4). Yet, while Olmpico
and Gloria as well, for that matter puts faith in an essential link between Macabeas physical
body and her true self, Macabea stands outside this realm of common sense. Something
stronger than all these external and visual evidences compels Macabea to insist on her ways,
despite Olmpicos remarks.
At a certain stage in the book the narrator describes Macabeas skin as being covered in dark
shadows that she tries to disguise with make-up: examinou de perto as manchas do rosto.
Em Alagoas chamavam-se panos, diziam que vinham do fgado. Disfarcava os panos com
grossa camada de po branco e se ficava meio caiada era melhor que o pardacento (1999, p. 27).
These words make it clear that Macabeas attempts to cover up the colour, or the imperfections,
of her skin are obvious and visible. The white powder she uses could be seen as an attempt to
pass as white, an attempt to perform whiteness. But unlike Gloria who, as we will see, manages
to hide her Afro-Brazilian origins, Macabeas attempt to pass herself off as white is unsuccessful
and her failure is self-evident ficava meio caiada. The word caiada (white-washed)
suggests the notion of a whiteness that looks artificial, not real. Macabeas attempts to pass
herself off as white are in fact so obvious and so clumsy that one could even debate whether or
not the term passing is at all suitable here, as it might imply that Macabea is more aware of the
norms regarding racial performance than she really is. Deliberate or not, Macabeas failure in this

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79

respect exposes the existence of accepted and unspoken norms controlling racial identity and its
inscription on female bodies.2
Macabea is not explicitly portrayed as being of mixed race, and, as far as we know, her
exclusion is not obviously caused by her being ethnically mixed. In the society that Lispectors
novel describes, being ethnically mixed can be a positive attribute, depending on how one
performs it socially. The problem with Macabea is that she is not able to use her ethnic
origins whatever they are for her own benefit. Gloria, on the contrary, is able to articulate
her mixed-race-ness, transforming it into a positive attribute.
Macabeas difficulties come from the way she performs her body. Bearing in mind Judith
Butlers notion of a body that matters some bodies fail to materialise, thereby providing the
necessary contrast that allows other bodies to materialise the norm and qualify as bodies that
matter (Butler 1993, p. 16) Glorias mixed-race origins are, in fact, instrumental in giving her
a body that matters. She is able, for example, to steal Macabeas boyfriend, Olmpico. This is
how Gloria is described:
Gloria possua no sangue um bom vinho portugues e tambem era amaneirada no bamboleio do
caminhar por causa do sangue africano escondido. Apesar de branca tinha em si a forca da mulatice.
Oxigenava em amarelo-ovo os cabelos crespos cujas razes estavam sempre pretas. Mas mesmo
oxigenada ela era loura, o que significava um degrau a mais para Olmpico . . . Vendo-a, ele
[Olmpico] logo adivinhou que, apesar de feia, Gloria era bem alimentada. E isso a fazia material de
boa qualidade. (1999, p. 59)

So, Glorias mixed blood (properly disguised) is instrumental in her having a body that matters.
In contrast to Macabeas absent, almost non-existent body, Glorias body is full of vitality,
strength and attractiveness. And part of her strength stems from her mixed-race origins. Glorias
mulatice has been properly disguised, offering a good example of passing. As we have seen
before, she controls her personal appearance, concealing some aspects her sangue africano
escondido and emphasising others: her blondeness, despite being fake, is clearly something
she is proud of. All this enhances her social status.
The socio-economic aspect of being well-fed is also instrumental in this process, bringing
the matter of class into the equation. Technically, Gloria and Macabea are both members of the
working class. Gloria, however, eats enough and regularly, while Macabea is often forced to eat
paper in order to placate her hunger (1999, p. 31). The butchers shop where Glorias father
works is described by the narrator as a very beautiful place (1999, p. 53). Olmpico, as soon as he
sees Gloria, perceives that she is a girl with real class mas quando ele viu Gloria, colega de
Macabea, sentiu logo que ela tinha classe (1999, p. 59). At one point Glorias familys social
position is depicted as burguesia de terceira classe: E que na desordem de uma terceira classe
de burguesia havia no entanto o morno conforto de quem gasta todo o dinheiro em comida, no
suburbio comia-se muito (1999, p. 66). In terms of class, Gloria is clearly better off than
Macabea.
Glorias identity is thus constructed from a combination of different social categories such as
race and class. Schlossberg regards such an overlapping as typical of the process of passing:
If passing wreaks havoc with accepted systems of social recognition and cultural intelligibility, it
also blurs carefully marked lines of race, gender and class, calling attention to the ways in which
identity categories intersect, overlap, construct and deconstruct one other. (Schlossberg 2001, p. 2)

Judith Butler has also emphasised how different social categories intersect in the construction
(and performance) of social identities: racializing norms . . . exist not merely alongside gender
norms, but are articulated through one another (Butler 1993, p. 182). In the case of Gloria,
we can see how both her class position and her ethnicity (mulatice) help her to construct a body
that matters.

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The construction of Glorias identity is also facilitated by Macabeas function as the Other,
against which Gloria will be contrasted. This process becomes evident in the following passage:
Gloria era toda contente consigo mesma: dava-se grande valor. Sabia que tinha o sestro molengole de
mulata, uma pintinha marcada junto da boca, so para dar uma gostosura, e um buco forte que ela
oxigenava . . . Era uma safadinha esperta mas tinha forca de coracao. Penalizava-se com Macabea
mas ela que se arranjasse, quem mandava ser tola? E Gloria pensava: nao tenho nada a ver com ela.
(1999, p. 64)

Gloria is able to articulate all these elements to enhance her effective, powerful physical
presence (material de boa qualidade). Most of all, through this process Gloria also becomes an
example of the national body, an example of the mestizo/a as Brazilian body, as celebrated in
Gilberto Freyres seminal book Casa grande e senzala (1933).
It is important to remember that Lispector started publishing in the Brazil of the post-Vargas
era. The Vargas years (1930 45) were a period of intense nation-building and strengthening of
the nation-state. Belonging to the nation being a national subject became an imperative, one
that Lispector could not escape. First published in 1933, Gilberto Freyres book provided a
positive interpretation of what had so far been seen as the source of many of the countrys
malaises: the non-European elements in its populations ethnic composition. If miscegenation
was viewed before as a way of avoiding the problems associated with blackness, now it came to
be interpreted positively as a harmonising and integrating mixture, as the essence of being
Brazilian.
According to the sociologist Renato Ortiz (1985), Freyres theory would plug a gap
in the construction of the nations identity. The theory of Brazil as a racial democracy would
fill a space that the countrys modernisation and nation-building had thus far left blank, and
Freyres positive attitude towards the mestizo/a would be instrumental in providing the
elements for the construction of a national racialised subject. This is how Ortiz explains
the process:
Gilberto Freyre transforma a negatividade do mestico em positividade, o que permite completar
definitivamente os contornos de uma identidade que ha muito vinha sendo desenhada . . . A ideologia
da mesticagem, que estava aprisionada a`s ambiguidades das teorias racistas, ao ser reelaborada pode
difundir-se socialmente e se tornar senso comum, ritualmente celebrado nas relacoes do cotidiano,
ou nos grandes eventos como o carnaval e o futebol. O que era mestico torna-se nacional. (Ortiz 1985,
p. 41)

Glorias successful performance of a national body reinforces Macabeas status as a

non-existent body. Macabeas ethnic origins are of no benefit to her in terms of the national
context: her dirty skin counts against her. Her image does not even appear in her own mirror:
Pareceu-lhe que o espelho baco e escurecido nao refletia imagem alguma. Sumira por acaso sua
existencia fsica? (1999, p. 25).
It is thus clear that there is a notion of a good, acceptable body against which Macabea
is always contrasted and found wanting. As we have seen, what is in operation, at the bottom
of all this, is a certain notion of race. This becomes clear in the following passage:
Olmpico talvez visse que Macabea nao tinha forca de raca, era subproduto (1999, p. 59).
Significantly, this sentence precedes the passage where Glorias disguised African origins are
praised.
However, near the end of the novel, after being run over by a car, Macabea is also described
as being part of a raca ana (dwarf race) and this time the racial allusion, despite sounding
extremely un-politically-correct in todays parlance, is associated with resilience and
stubbornness: apesar de tudo ela pertencia a uma resistente raca ana teimosa que um dia vai
talvez reinvindicar o direito ao grito (1999, p. 80). It is precisely this notion of racial resistance
that I want to focus on in the remainder of this article.

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies

81

Macabea does not constitute an extraordinary case. The narrator clearly refers to many other
girls just like her:
Como a nordestina, ha milhares de mocas espalhadas por corticos, vagas de cama num quarto, atras
de balcoes trabalhando ate a estafa. Nao notam sequer que sao facilmente substituveis e que tanto
existiriam como nao existiriam. Poucas se queixam e ao que eu saiba nenhuma reclama por nao saber
a quem. Esse quem sera que existe? (1999, p. 14)

In other instances, Macabea is often named simply as the Northeastern girl, as if her place
of origin were her most important feature: preciso falar desta nordestina senao sufoco
(1999, p. 17); quero neste instante falar da nordestina (1999, p. 18). The group of girls that the
narrator is referring to in the quotations above is identified as migrant women from Northeastern
Brazil. The narrator also locates Macabeas origins in the sertao (backlands), a space described
as remote and isolated: Nascera inteiramente raqutica, heranca do sertao os maus
antecedentes de que falei. Com dois anos de idade lhe haviam morrido os pais de febres ruins no
sertao do Alagoas, la onde o diabo perdera as botas (1999, p. 28). The expression la onde o
diabo perdera as botas (there, where the devil had lost his boots) is a way of referring to a
space that is so distant that it is excluded from any map and cannot even be named. Macabeas
origins are located out of bounds, beyond any known territory. They are also, it seems,
excluded from the imaginary space of the nation.
The narrator emphasises that both Olmpico and Macabea come from the Northeast, and are,
in terms of their origins, almost brother and sister:
As poucas conversas entre os namorados versavam sobre farinha, carne-de-sol, carne-seca, rapadura,
melado. Pois esse era o passado de ambos e eles esqueciam o amargor da infancia . . . Pareciam por
demais irmaos, coisa que so agora estou percebendo nao da para casar. (1999, p. 47)

Yet, despite the fact that they are both from the Northeast, the narrator points out how different
Olmpico is from Macabea. The contrast between Macabea and Olmpico underlines the
importance of performativity regarding the position the Northeasterner might be able to reach in
society. Olmpicos macho qualities his familiarity with violence, with stealing, and with
cheating compensate for his poor origins, granting him a degree of social status. Olmpicos
rudeness towards Macabea makes sense if we understand that, despite their similarities, by
rejecting and ridiculing her, he is constructing his own identity as different. This is how the
narrator contrasts the two Northeasterners:
Mas ainda nao expliquei bem Olmpico. Vinha do sertao da Paraba e tinha uma resistencia que
provinha da paixao por sua terra braba e rachada pela seca . . . nascera crestado e duro que nem galho
seco de arvore ou pedra de sol. Era mais passvel de salvacao que Macabea pois nao fora a` toa que
matara um homem, desafeto seu, nos cafundos do sertao, o canivete comprido entrando mole-mole
no fgado macio do sertanejo. Guardava disso segredo absoluto, o que lhe dava a forca que um
segredo da. Olmpico era macho de briga . . . Macabea, ao contrario de Olmpico, era fruto do
cruzamento de o que com o que. Na verdade ela parecia ter nascido de uma ideia vaga qualquer
dos pais famintos. Olmpico pelo menos roubava sempre que podia e ate do vigia das obras onde era
sua dormida. Ter matado e roubar faziam com que ele nao fosse um simples acontecido qualquer,
davam-lhe uma categoria, faziam dele um homem com honra ja lavada. (1999, pp. 57 58)

Olmpicos ability to steal and kill gives him a sense of personal power that Macabea does not
have. He knows how to compensate for his origins: he could pass as white. Again, the problem
with Macabea seems to rest more with her inability to perform whiteness than with her ethnic
origins themselves.
We are dealing here with the sertanejo/a, a figure whose physical and cultural traits were
described at length by Euclides da Cunha in his masterpiece Os sertoes (1902). In Os sertoes
Da Cunha presented the figure of the sertanejo/a as an ethnic composition which from an
initial mixture of Portuguese, indigenous and, to a lesser extent, African blood developed

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in extreme isolation whilst in close relationship with a very tough environment (the catingas
with their harsh, desert vegetation and periodic droughts). The sertanejo/a is a mestizo/a in
whom the African element, although present, is of minimal importance.
Lispectors novel makes direct reference to Da Cunhas work. When describing Olmpico,
the narrator reflects that there will be a moment when Olmpico will forget his origins and
become a winner. The narrator in Lispectors text states: O sertanejo e antes de tudo um
paciente. Eu o perdoo (1999, p. 66). This is a clear reversal of Da Cunhas text: O sertanejo e,
antes de tudo, um forte (Da Cunha 1983, p. 142).
In fact, Da Cunhas description of the sertanejo is rather ambivalent.3 He starts by
emphasising his strength, and by favourably contrasting him to other mestizos from the coast.
However, he goes on to enumerate several negative features in the sertanejos appearance:
O sertanejo e, antes de tudo, um forte. Nao tem o raquitismo exaustivo dos mesticos neurastenicos do
litoral.
A sua aparencia, entretanto, ao primeiro lance de vista, revela o contrario. Falta-lhe a plastica
impecavel, o desempeno, a estrutura correctssima das organizacoes atleticas. E desgracioso,
desengoncado e torto. Hercules-Quasmodo reflecte no aspecto a fealdade dos fracos . . . E o homem
permanentemente fatigado. (Da Cunha 1983, pp. 142143)

Lack of charm, frailty, ugliness; Da Cunhas representation of the sertanejo is not too
dissimilar from the picture we are given of Macabea. However, after this introduction, Da Cunha
will note that, in the face of unexpected adversity, a radical change takes place in the sertanejo:
entretanto, toda esta aparencia de cansaco ilude . . . Basta-lhe o aparecimento de qualquer incidente
exigindo-lhe o desencadear das energias adormecidas. O homem transfigura-se . . . reponta,
inesperadamente, o aspecto dominador de um tita acobreado e potente, num desdobramento
surpreendente de forca e agilidade extraordinarias. (Da Cunha 1983, p. 143)

Da Cunha combines positive and negative aspects in his representation of the sertanejo. His
position is quite ambivalent, oscillating between the racist scientific theories of his time, with
their very negative views on miscegenation A mistura de racas mui diversas e na maioria dos
casos prejudicial . . . a mesticagem extremada e um retrocesso (Da Cunha 1983, p. 135) and
his admiration for the sertanejos physical and psychological strength. Da Cunha goes out of his
way to present the sertanejo as an exception, a case where miscegenation had positive results:
Aquela raca cruzada surge autonoma e de algum modo, original, transfigurando . . . todos os
atributos herdados . . . nos sertoes a integridade organica do mestico desponta inteirica e
robusta (Da Cunha 1983, p. 140).
Da Cunhas book describes a war waged between government forces and the local
inhabitants of the settlement of Canudos, in the Northeast of Brazil. The inhabitants of
Canudos by demanding the return of the monarchy, under the leadership of the religious
leader Antonio Conselheiro challenged the positivist ideas of the new Republic. After an
extremely arduous campaign, the forces of the republican government finally annihilated the
rebellious community. Da Cunha, however, emphasises the strength of the rebels resistance,
both in military and cultural terms, and sees the physical strength of the sertanejo as the
embodiment of such resistance. Macabea will be another representation of cultural and
physical resilience.
We could also take the view that Lispector is trying to track the origins and the
persistence of a specific kind of racial discrimination: one that, instead of focusing on AfroBrazilian aspects, targets the figure of the Northeasterner. In relation to this novel, it is difficult
not to identify this discrimination as a form of racism. The negative aspects of the Northeasterner
are not simply associated with cultural traits, but are clearly related to physical features,
specifically to skin colour (amarelada, cor de suja, pardacenta). Lispectors novel also

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies

83

draws on racist terminology with its use of terms such as raca ana (dwarf race), forca de
raca (strength of race) and racial subproduto.
The novel seems to be drawing our attention to the fact that unlike the mulatto/a the
figure of the Northeasterner has been downgraded in terms of the ethnic composition of the
Brazilian population. The Northeasterner is portrayed as the product of a kind of miscegenation
that has somehow gone sour. It does not have the positive connotations of the sensual
mulatto/a that we have seen above when discussing the character of Gloria. Although important
and visible in large numbers, the figure of the Northeasterner remains on the margins of
the nation, despised and neglected. Being a Northeasterner is not the same as having some
African blood.
There has been some controversy regarding the ethnic origins of the sertanejos. Da Cunha
traced their origins back to the eighteenth century, when enslaved indigenous people mixed with
mamelucos (mixed-race descendants of European and indigenous stock) from Sao Paulo who
went to settle in the sertao. He points to the absence of African blood in those paulistas (people
born in Sao Paulo): they were uma raca de curibocas puros, quase sem mescla de sangue
africano (Da Cunha 1983, p. 125), where curiboca is another term for the descendants of
indigenous and European parents. Some of these paulistas may have had children with people of
African origin, although, according to Da Cunha, the African contribution to the ethnic
composition of the sertanejo has not been very significant. In Casa grande e senzala, Freyre tries
to correct Da Cunha by pointing to the importance of the African presence in the sertanejo. He
quotes, for example, E. Roquette-Pinto, who argues that in Os sertoes there is much evidence to
prove that
aqueles homens que antes de tudo eram fortes tinham farta gota de sangue africano. E so reler a
descricao do povileu de Canudos: Todas as idades, todos os tipos, todas as cores . . . grenhas
maltratadas de crioulas retintas; cabelos corredios de caboclas, trunfas escandalosas de africana . . .
(Roquette-Pinto, quoted in Freyre 1973, p. 84)

Freyres argument is aimed at including Da Cunhas sertanejo within the ethnic group of
the Brazilian mestizo who is a product of the mixture of three ethnic groups, the Portuguese, the
indigenous and the African:
Muito do que Euclides exaltou como valor da raca indgena, ou da sub-raca formada pela uniao do
branco com o ndio, sao virtudes provindas antes da mistura das tres racas que da do ndio com o
branco; ou tanto do negro quanto do ndio ou do portugues. (Freyre 1973, p. 45)

However, Lispectors novel suggests that the figure of the Northeasterner and more
specifically that of the sertanejo/a has a distinct ethnic make-up. The contrast between the
Northeastern Macabea and the carioca (Rio de Janeiro-born) Gloria, who is able to transform her
Africanness into a positive attribute of sensuality, is a way of marking this ethnic distinction.
The point to note here is not the importance of the ethnic difference in itself, but the fact that this
ethnic difference is replete with negative social and cultural meanings, as we have indicated.
Macabeas position of exclusion and difference has already been explored by other critics
from a Jewish perspective. The name Macabea is an explicit reference to the Jewish tribe of the
Maccabees, the only direct reference to Jewishness in Lispectors work. The Maccabees were a
group of Jews who, during the period 175 134 BC, resisted the campaign of the Greek King
Antiochus Epiphanes to hellenise them. King Antiochus Epiphanes prohibited Jewish religious
practice, forcing pagan deities upon the Jews. The Maccabees resisted this change, and remained
monotheists. Nelson H. Vieira notes that the name Maccabees means hammer-headed, or
those who never lose their faith (Vieira 1995, p. 142). He stresses the similarities between this
expression and the pejorative way of referring to Brazilian Northeasterners as cabeca chata
(flathead) (Vieira 1995, p. 142) to explain how Macabea who simply endures and

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withstands is, in fact, a revision of the traditional Jewish archetypes of the martyr and the
oppressed, glorified and idealised (Vieira 1995, p. 141).
Berta Waldman, however, expands on Vieiras ideas and points out that Macabea ignores
the biblical origins of her name: nao sei o que esta dentro do meu nome (1999, p. 56).
This reinforces her position of exclusion, situating her outside Brazil and outside its history. For
Waldman, this means that Macabea is effectively adrift, in um lugar a` deriva, with no personal
history and no sense of belonging (Waldman 1998, p. 100). This absence of a personal history
the lack of an acknowledged past is compounded by a lack of future and a lack of direction, as
the notion of being adrift suggests. The timeframe that Macabea inhabits is one that has no past
and no future: Mas Macabea de um modo geral nao se preocupava com o proprio futuro: ter
futuro era luxo (1999, p. 58). She inhabits an eternal present in which she moves at random.
On the other hand, Waldman also emphasises how often the narrator compares Macabea to
the vegetation capim a resistant type of wild grass that prepares the soil for more advanced
plants in the ecological cycle. Waldman interprets this recurrent image as a metaphor for
Macabeas persistence and determination (Waldman 1998, p. 97). It is interesting to note,
however, that the image of capim contains a paradox. While in its random propagation the
capim echoes Macabeas lack of direction, its roots are very strong, fixing Macabea firmly in
the urban soil of Rio de Janeiro:
O que estava acontecendo era um surdo terremoto? Tinha-se aberto em fendas a terra de Alagoas.
` toa. Quem sabe se
Fixava, so por fixar, o capim. Capim na grande Cidade do Rio de Janeiro. A
Macabea ja teria alguma vez sentido que tambem ela era a`-toa na cidade inconquistavel. (1999,
pp. 80 81)

Despite her lack of direction, despite being defeated by the big city, Macabea finds her space, a
way of inserting herself into the metropolis. She brings her own native state of Alagoas into Rio,
where it will remain, fixed. This ambivalence marks both Macabeas survival and her death.
Although Macabea has enormous difficulties in passing herself off as white and in asserting
herself in society, we should not lose sight of her successes. For a very short period in the novel,
Macabea enjoys the possibility of having a future, and the possibility of belonging, of becoming,
to a certain extent, a subject in her own right. In the final pages, when a fortune teller whom she
has gone to visit on Glorias recommendation tells Macabea what is going to happen to her, she
is given a future and some hope: Macabea nunca tinha tido coragem de ter esperanca (1999,
p. 76). Macabea changes and realises that she has been very unhappy: Madama Carlota havia
acertado tudo. Macabea estava espantada. So entao vira que sua vida era uma miseria. Teve
vontade de chorar ao ver o seu lado oposto, ela que, como eu disse, ate entao se julgava feliz
(1999, p. 79). Her incipient future it does not last more than a few minutes is again
associated with the image of the capim: viu entre as pedras do esgoto o ralo capim de um verde
da mais tenra esperanca humana. Hoje, pensou, hoje e o primeiro dia de minha vida: nasci
(1999, p. 80).
Therefore, it is only in the final minutes of her life that Macabea starts to make sense of, and
give meaning to, what has happened to her. Now she acquires a consciousness, and a sense of
having a place in society. Only now, when she realises she has a past to reject and a future to
wish for, Macabea can understand how unhappy she has been: So entao vira que sua vida era
uma miseria. Teve vontade de chorar ao ver seu lado oposto, ela que, como eu disse, ate entao se
julgava feliz (1999, p. 79).
Macabeas self-awareness her consciousness of her inclusion in a cultural environment
immediately precedes her end. Her birth as a conscious subject is almost simultaneous with her
death. This is possibly a symptom of Lispectors pessimism. Lispector takes a few pages to deal
with Macabeas new hope. Macabeas last words quanto ao futuro are not understood

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies

85

by the passers-by and are followed by her feeling nauseous: queria vomitar o que nao e corpo,
vomitar algo luminoso. Estrela de mil pontas (1999, p. 85). These last words, estrela de mil
pontas (a star with a thousand points), indicate that Macabeas desire to become a film star
as expressed in the title of the novel itself will remain unfulfilled.
Macabeas attempts at belonging are faced with insurmountable obstacles. Uninterrogated
racism, from which Macabea can be protected for as long as she does not claim a place in
society, prevails at the end, and her ability to resist as her name and origin might suggest is
very limited. One could say that becoming conscious of her position of exclusion and her
subsequent wish to change this situation force Macabea to see and confront whiteness itself.
The wealthy, white German who drives the car that kills her could be interpreted as an
embodied apparition of European whiteness that is in direct opposition to Macabeas existence.
Macabea could co-exist with a non-examined desirable yet unreachable whiteness, that of
Marilyn Monroe. But by becoming aware of her exclusion as subject Macabea becomes aware of
a situation of oppression: whiteness turns out to be a concrete, real obstacle, one that she cannot
survive.
Notes
1.
2.
3.

When explaining the concept of mimicry in the context of colonial textuality, Homi Bhabha refers to
a kind of difference that is almost the same but not quite and almost the same but not white
(Bhabha 1994, p. 89).
The combination of race and gender in the formation of Macabeas identity could be explored further.
In this article, however, as mentioned before, I will focus mainly on the issue of race.
In this section of the article, I will be using the masculine terms sertanejo and mestizo because they are
more in keeping with the thinking of Euclides da Cunha.

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