Women’s Madness as a Social Construct in the Novel Misiá Señora by Albalucía Ángel

Abstract

This article examines the representation of women’s madness in the novel Misiá Señora by Albalucía Ángel to argue that the protagonist’s diagnosis of madness and subsequent institutionalization serve as a social construct, lack a scientific foundation and function as mechanisms of social discipline. I contend that the psychiatric procedures to which she is subjected operate less as therapeutic interventions than as punitive correctives aimed at regulating her defiance of patriarchal authority and her transgression of normative gendered behavior. This essay begins by reviewing scholarship on the novel that does not question the mental health diagnosis attributed to the main character. It then undertakes a close reading of the protagonist’s institutionalization to demonstrate how Ángel’s novel reveals madness as a device to neutralize women who resist socially prescribed roles. The analysis draws on feminist critiques of the “psy” disciplines—particularly those that interrogate the gendered construction of mental illness and the historical role of these disciplines in policing women’s bodies, emotions, and conduct. The conclusions highlight that, in Misiá Señora, the protagonist’s pathologization functions as a disciplinary tool that reinforces hegemonic gender norms by framing dissent as clinical deviance and justifying coercive forms of control.

1. Introduction

Colombian literature has developed as a discursive space in which texts written by women have largely remained in the shadows (Valencia 2024, pp. 189–91), relegated to the margins of the traditional literary canon (Pérez and Gil 2022, Un género masculino, para. 1). Seeking to broaden the discussion on works situated at the periphery, this study examines Misiá Señora by Albalucía Ángel, author from Pereira, Colombia, to argue that the protagonist’s diagnosis of madness and subsequent institutionalization serve as a social construct, lack a scientific foundation and function as mechanisms of social discipline1.

Misiá Señora was published in Barcelona in 1982 by the publishing house Argos Vergara. When published, there were difficulties distributing the work in the author’s home country. In an interview conducted during the literary festival, Fiesta del Libro (held at Parque Explora, Medellín, in 2019), Ángel recalls that her editor, Carlos Barral, told her that after sending copies of Misiá Señora for distribution in Colombia, he never received a response from the local publishing house. Although Ángel does not specify the name of publisher, she recounts that she later discovered the books stored in boxes. The writer adds that the publishing house, without realizing she was the author, dismissed her work, stating: “We are not interested in that woman” (Parque Explora 2019). Due to these obstacles in distribution, critiques on the novel were scarce. In this respect, Navia (2006) highlights three reasons that could have also delayed discussions about Misiá Señora: (a) At the time of its publication, Colombian society was not prepared to assimilate such a loud outcry against the patriarchal violence that the narco-culture had taken to the extreme; (b) The female readership, to whom the work is directed, was not wide enough nor prepared to apprehend the strong demands of the novel; and (c) The linguistic and stylistic experimentation of the narrative were ahead of its time, anticipating postmodernism, which also reduced its reception (p. 31). Nevertheless, these impediments did not stop literary critics from slowly turning their attention to Misiá Señora and applauded the complexity of the novel’s discourse as well as the vehement declaration against the oppression of women.

This novel is constructed by a labyrinthine and polyphonic narrative (Uribe 2001) that recreates, from different narrative voices throughout distinct generations, the life of four women who share the same name: Mariana. The name is not circumstantial, as it refers to the archetype of the Virgin Mary as the model to follow. The Marianas in the novel come from a religious, aristocratic, and patriarchal family who are rooted in Colombia’s Coffee Region during the first half of the 20th Century, a region where women are taught, according to precepts, to suppress specific emotions and adopt certain behaviors. “Déjate enseñar, déjate mandar, déjate sujetar y serás perfecta” [Let yourself be taught, let yourself be controlled, let yourself be subjected, and you will be perfect] (Ángel [1982] 2019, p. 269) is the command to submit that the female characters receive in Misiá Señora. However, the last of the Marianas resists domination. She expresses her desire not to get married, but instead, attend the university. Nevertheless, prisoner to a society in which the critical thinking of women is disqualified and individual desires repressed, the protagonist, like many women of her generation and status, has no other alternative than to accept marriage and motherhood as her destiny. After years of dedicating her life exclusively to her children and caring for her home, resigned to living with her husband’s constant infidelities, Mariana commits adultery. After her affair, she is committed to a psychiatric institution. She is released from the asylum as soon as she appears rational and well-behaved. So, the protagonist returns to her empty, monotonous life, confined to watching time pass until she gets old.

From the earliest critical interpretations, the condition attributed to the protagonist’s psyche has largely been read as an individual psychological crisis. This article challenges that interpretive consensus by interrogating the assumptions that sustain such a diagnosis. Rather than treating institutionalization as the consequence of an underlying pathology, the analysis approaches it as a historically and discursively mediated practice through which normative forms of femininity are enforced. Drawing on feminist critiques of the “psy” disciplines—psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, and related fields2—this study situates madness within a gendered epistemology that has historically legitimized the regulation of women’s bodies, emotions, and conduct. From this perspective, the protagonist’s alleged mental illness does not emerge from a disruption of her psyche but from an androcentric and patriarchal framework that pathologizes deviations from prescribed gender norms and authorizes coercive forms of social control.

2. Women’s Mental Illness Unquestioned

Williams (1998) catalogued Misiá Señora as a hermetic novel that contained a well-defined feminist discourse. On the one hand, the protagonist is pressured by traditional societal expectations—marriage and motherhood. On the other hand, she is driven by the desire to give her life its own significance (p. 105). Indeed, throughout the story, the protagonist is tormented by a life shaped by traditional mandates imposed on her simply because she is a woman. Compliance with the norms is evidenced not only by the fact that the decision to marry is out of her control, but even who she must marry. Her family chooses Arlén Fontecha, a man from their same social circle, to be her husband. Notably, it is not a coincidence that the last name of her suitor is similar to the Spanish word “fantoche”—puppet, buffoon, or marionette. Even though Arlén is approved of by her family, Mariana is not even attracted to him. She describes him as follows: “[…] amable, muy bien puesto, muy buen partido, embelequero, buen hijo, tarambana, mujeriego, coqueto, buen mozo, manirroto, marrullero, jailoso, diciendo chilindrinas” [nice, well-dressed, a good catch, a smooth talker, a good son, scatterbrained, womanizer, flirty, handsome, spendthrift, schemer, flashy, nonsense-talking] (Ángel [1982] 2019, p. 127). In this inventory of virtues and defects, expressed jokingly, there is an ironic repertoire in which imperfections outnumber qualities. We hear Mariana’s doubts, unconvinced about the supposed qualifications of Arlén as a suitable candidate. His vices like frivolity (smooth talker), poor judgement (scatterbrained), superficiality (nonsense-talking), a tendency to wastefulness (spendthrift), infidelity (womanizer and flirty), and deceitfulness (schemer), all shadow his supposed attributes—nice, well-dressed, a good catch, a good son, handsome, and from an upper-class family—that undoubtedly reached her ears through others. The marriage is arranged, and Mariana achieves what her society regards as one of the primary goals of any rational woman. The next objective, viewed as an inherent consequence of marriage, is motherhood. Nevertheless, before guaranteeing the continuation of the Fontecha bloodline, Mariana must follow a series of instructions that, disguised as advice, come out during the wedding preparations.

[…] ni andes como una clueca, detrás de él, todo el día, no se te ocurra preguntarle ni a dónde va ni si le queda plata para comprarte tú una agüita de Colonia, no se te pase por la mente decir que son buenmozos otros hombres, ni los de las películas, quédate muda cuando él comience a amenazar que si quieres empaco, mañana mismo yo me largo, y si él te dice que eres una bruta, igualita a tu madre, bruta animal, así son las mujeres, mejor cuenta hasta diez, ofrécelo a la Virgen [and don’t walk around like a broody hen after him all day long, don’t you dare ask him where he is going or if he has a little extra money to buy you perfume, don’t even think about saying other men are handsome, not even those in the movies, stay quiet when he begins to threaten that if you want me to pack, I’ll leave tomorrow, and if he says you’re stupid, just like your mother, a stupid animal, because that’s what women are, it’s better to count to ten, offer your suffering to the Virgin].

(Ángel [1982] 2019, p. 129)

Mariana appears to repeat the precepts that she has heard from other women throughout her whole life. In this series of commands that implore prudence, modesty, patience, and silence, it is impossible not to see that the call of tolerance and resignation within the institution of matrimony emerges from a religious framework that urges Mariana to offer her acts of altruism to the mother of Christ. From this perspective, she will be compensated for this in the afterlife. This series of commands constitutes a litany of instructions that not only justifies the intellectual inferiority of women, but also the violence committed against them. After all, at the time in which the literary text is set, religious discourse was intertwined with outdated psychological disciplines such as phrenology—a 19th Century pseudoscience that, by comparing the cerebral structures of men and women, planted binary oppositions between the sexes. The male temperament was associated with reason, action, and intellectual capability, whereas the female temperament was linked to sensitivity, passivity, and abnegation. These dualities were not innocuous, as they relegated women to the domestic sphere and offered purportedly scientific explanations for the dangers women supposedly faced in spaces considered masculine (García Díaz 2020, p. 1).

This being the order of things, Mariana’s physical suffering begins on her wedding night. Intercourse is, for the protagonist, a torture that repeats until she becomes pregnant, and physical torture continues throughout her pregnancies: “La dulce espera, dicen. O sea, las vomitonas, las maluqueras más horribles, el miedo y esos sudores fríos, consumiéndote. Yo tenía horror de estar posesa. No lo entendí jamás, pero cuando sentía las pataditas me imaginaba un monstruo […]” [The sweet wait, they say. In other words, the vomiting, the awful discomfort, the fear, and those cold sweats, eating you alive. I was horrified by being possessed. I never understood it, but when I felt the little kicks, I imagined a monster] (Ángel [1982] 2019, p. 151). Let us remember that, at this point, Mariana appears as if she is talking to herself, given that had she openly expressed her negative feelings about pregnancy and the baby she carries, she would have been condemned as being an unnatural mother. The protagonist’s life takes place over decades, following, against her will, the guidelines of established gender roles assigned to women of her social status: conserving the status of a homemaker, mother, and wife who pretends to ignore the extramarital affairs of her husband. In this regard, Mariana’s unease may be read as resonant with what Friedan (1963) described as “the problem that has no name”, a form of unarticulated dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment that emerges within domestic roles and persists despite material stability, producing a pervasive sense of boredom and emptiness.

In Misiá Señora, this imposition of social mandates designed to discipline and regulate the behaviors and emotions of women has been generally understood by the critics to be the condition that affects Mariana’s psyche. In her earliest examination of the novel, Keefe Ugalde (1984) interpreted the protagonist’s disturbance as a psychological crisis that leads her to a brief hospitalization in a mental institution (p. 1099). Subsequent scholarship has largely maintained this line of interpretation. For instance, Aristizábal (2005) contends that Mariana’s madness results from the instability between her attempt to express her desires and her simultaneous condemnation to silence (pp. 101–2). Similarly, Navia (2006) maintains that the mental breakdown stems from the fragility imposed on women within a patriarchal system (pp. 35–36). Betancur (2007) goes so far as to propose a specific psychoanalytical diagnosis for the protagonist’s alleged “malfunction” and “abnormality”. From this view, Mariana exhibits symptoms of hysteria and neurosis, conditions understood as emotional collapse resulting from constant repression (pp. 62, 66). It is evident that this scholarship does not question the authority of medical discourse and treats psychiatric, psychological, and psychoanalytical diagnoses and categories as truth-bearing frameworks grounded in objective, neutral and universally valid knowledge. In this respect, it is worth recalling that Ehrenreich and English (1978) demonstrated that hysteria—despite lacking any identifiable organic basis—became the dominant diagnostic category behind all labels assigned to female invalidity from the second half of the 19th Century onward (The Reign of the Experts. Chapter Four: The Sexual Politics of Sickness. Subverting the Sick Role: Hysteria, paras. 16, 17). It is also relevant to note that hysteria has long been discredited as a medical diagnosis. In the American Psychiatric Association (1980) removed the term from the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III).

But women’s madness in Misiá Señora has likewise been regarded in more ambivalent or even enabling terms. In fact, Mariana’s mental illness has been interpreted as a form of withdrawal: M. M. Jaramillo (1991) reads it as a form of ultimate escape—as a space in which the protagonist becomes inaccessible (p. 222)—while Rosas Consuegra (2017) understands it as a refuge to sever ties from the burden of social expectations (p. 28). The protagonist’s mental breakdown has even been understood by Guerra-Cunningham (1999) as a force capable of threatening the prevailing system:

[…] es precisamente la locura la que finalmente funciona como signo bisémico que subraya la diglosia entre la mujer dicha y la mujer que se dice a sí misma: si para la visión falogocéntrica la locura es aquello que debe ser marginado y encarcelado por su calidad herética con respecto a todo orden, dentro del discurso que empieza a gestarse, la locura es también la amenaza […] que empieza a socavar y desestabilizar las y los órdenes del sistema patriarcal. [It is madness what ultimately functions as a bisemic sign that underscores the diglossia between the woman who is spoken and the woman who speaks for herself. While from a phallogocentric perspective madness is something that must be marginalized and confined due to its heretical nature in relation to any established order, within the discourse that is beginning to emerge madness is also a threat […] that starts to undermine and destabilize the orders of the patriarchal system].

(p. 21)

Recently, the language of madness has also been read as a literary tool that allows for the questioning of restrictive social norms and as an instrument of women’s liberation. Sánchez-Blake (2024) states that, although it is reasonable to assert that the protagonist’s emotional imbalance results from her internal and external conflicts, the purpose of the narrative is to use the language of madness—the transgression of norms, the alteration of syntax, and linguistic fragmentation—to convey a message of experimentation and affirmation of female subjectivity. In this sense, Ángel would reproduce the character’s conflict through an overflowing, schizoid discourse, thereby liberating the protagonist from oppression through the possibilities of language (pp. 7–8).

As can be observed, these studies do not question the mental health diagnosis that allegedly afflicts the main character. In this context, adultery has been viewed as the specific transgression that produced an overwhelming sense of guilt, ultimately precipitating Mariana’s mental breakdown. Osorio (1995) maintains that the guilt generated by her transgressive act surpasses what the protagonist’s reason can withstand, thus rendering madness its inevitable consequence (p. 389). In a similar vein, Aristizábal (2005) argues that the protagonist is unable to cope with having violated the moral codes imposed on married women (p. 101). Sánchez-Blake (2024) likewise contends that, upon recognizing the gravity of her “sin”, Mariana loses her sanity (p. 12).

However, certain scholars do detect something unusual in Mariana’s abrupt shift from sanity to madness. Osorio (1995) notes that the narrative offers no clear explanation for Mariana’s descent into madness (p. 389), and Navia (2006) emphasizes that the novel provides no concrete motive that would account for the onset of the protagonist’s condition (p. 36). This essay argues that the novel provides sufficient evidence to expose the supposed mental illness attributed to Mariana as illusory. In what follows, the article turns to a close reading of protagonist’s institutionalization to show that she never loses her mind; instead, her psychiatric diagnosis and institutionalization function as a form of punishment for her indecorous behavior.

3. The Diagnosis of Women’s Madness and Institutionalization as Mechanisms of Social Discipline

Misiá Señora discloses that, after more than a decade of marriage, while on vacation on the Atlantic Coast, Mariana is unfaithful to her husband, engaging in an affair with a man from the region. After Mariana and that man meet up at a nightclub, an interaction that includes dancing and alcohol, the plot suddenly turns to the protagonist, who has been committed to a psychiatric facility. We know, through Mariana, that from one moment to the next, two muscular men wearing white take her by force and away in an ambulance. And we know through the circulation of rumors in her hometown, comments about her behavior and hospitalization abound:

Dicen que está como embrujada. En la Costa hay mandinga y burundanga que si uno se descuida… Y los muchachos, ¿dónde están…? Donde la abuela, unos diítas, mientras ven si es un trastorno o es loquera de las bravas. Las que se crían así, medio morrongas, como maullando pasitico son las que salen después como un molino de viento […] Cuentan que anda en batola y hablando como en verso. [They say she’s, like, bewitched. On the Coast, there’s witchcraft and Devil’s Breath, so if you’re not careful … And the children, where are they? At their grandmother’s for a few days while they determine if it’s a condition or if it’s serious madness. The ones raised like that, deceitful, soft spoken, are the ones that let loose […] They say she wanders around in a nightgown, talking nonsense].

(Ángel [1982] 2019, pp. 268–69)

We are not certain whether these voices, unreliable narrators who rely on unverified sources, know the exact cause as to why Mariana ends up hospitalized in a mental health institution while on vacation. Even though rumors spread about certain potions from the Atlantic Coast that could cause a woman to lose her mind, the gossip quickly paints the protagonist as one of those shameless women—‘letting loose’, seemingly prim and proper—‘deceitful’, and only silent on the surface—‘soft spoken’. Through clearly prejudiced attitudes laced with superiority, these voices also allude to behaviors, like being careless in her dress and delirious in her words, that reinforce their belief that Mariana is not in her right mind.

Nevertheless, the most disturbing aspects of Mariana’s hospitalization are both the absence of a clinical evaluation diagnosing her with a specific mental illness and the lack of a medical order that commits her to being hospitalized in a psychiatric facility. Likewise, the protagonist never exhibits, at any moment in the novel, a mental health crisis. In fact, throughout the narrative, her actions do not show behaviors that go beyond a half-voiced protest or solitary complaint. The reasons for her hospitalization seem to come from ulterior motives.

It is possible that critics did not question a sudden onset of lunacy of the protagonist of Misiá Señora because there is an unfounded belief that has pervaded the social imagination throughout history—women are predisposed to madness. García Dauder and Pérez Sedeño (2017) remind us that this unfounded belief has a long history:

Hipócrates y Platón consideraban que la enfermedad mental femenina por excelencia, la histeria, era provocada por el útero errante. El órgano reproductivo podía pasearse por todo el cuerpo provocando todo tipo de males y disfunciones […] la solución era mantener el útero húmedo–según la teoría de los cuatro humores, las mujeres son húmedas y frías, por tanto, esas cualidades debe tener su órgano por excelencia–por medio de relaciones sexuales. Areteo sostenía que el útero se movía porque era “un animal dentro de un animal”, pero Galeno atribuía sus movimientos a un funcionamiento sexual anormal, lo que producía una sofocación histérica: si el útero no funcionaba–como en las viudas o mujeres sometidas a largos periodos de abstinencia sexual–retenía la sangre menstrual o semen viejo y envenenaba el cuerpo. [Hippocrates and Plato believed the cause of hysteria, the quintessential female mental illness, lies in a ‘wandering womb’. This reproductive organ could wander around the body, causing all kinds of pathologies and dysfunctions […] The solution was to keep the uterus humid. According to Hippocrates’ theory of the four humors, women’s bodies are physiologically cold and humid; therefore, the wandering womb must have these quintessential qualities, achieved through sexual intercourse. Aretaeus argued that the uterus moved because it was ‘an animal inside an animal’, but Galen attributed its movements to an abnormal sexual function, one that produced hysterical suffocation. If the uterus did not function, like what widows or women who had long periods of sexual abstinence experienced, it retained its menstrual blood or old semen and poisoned the body].

(p. 151)

The belief that linked the female body with physical and mental disorders pervaded long beyond the classical era. By the late Middle Ages, uterine suffocation—along with delirium, melancholy, epilepsy, and other behaviors that were considered abnormal—was associated with demonic possession (Katajala-Peltomaa 2014). These incidents were related to the emergence of witch hunts (Caciola 2003) and to discourses that classified the mystical feminine experience of medieval Europe as mental illness3. The supposed inclination of women toward spiritual or physical maladies, despite lacking a solid scientific foundation, persisted throughout the modern era. Showalter (1985) remarked that the association between women and mental instability was consolidated with the birth of the “psy” disciplines in the 19th century. From 1870, psychiatrists began to monitor the borders between sanity and madness to stop the infiltration of “contaminated” bloodlines in society. What is particular about this form of surveillance is that it extended not only to subjects who came from lower social classes or exhibited alleged moral weaknesses, but also to women who, inspired by suffragist movements, began to organize to claim their rights. Under these circumstances, the “nerve specialist” was born, someone who had the authority to dictate appropriate female behavior (p. 18) and who, alongside psychologists and psychiatrists, formed a corps of experts on women’s lives (Ehrenreich and English 1978, The Reign of the Experts. Chapter Four: The Sexual Politics of Sickness. Subverting the Sick Role: Hysteria, para. 27). The consolidation of psychoanalysis, in turn, emphasized the process of female pathologization:

[…] las mujeres profesionales o intelectuales que rechazaban las ataduras de la feminidad eran interpretadas por Freud como fascinantes casos clínicos de “envidia de pene” o “complejos de masculinidad”. En el diván psicoanalista la Nueva Mujer [o feminista] se transformaba en una mujer inmadura cuyo complejo de masculinidad estancaba su natural desarrollo hacia una feminidad madura, eso es, pasiva, masoquista y narcisista.

[Professional or intellectual women who rejected the ties of femininity were interpreted, by Freud, as fascinating clinical cases of ‘penis envy’ or ‘masculinity complexes.’ On the psychoanalyst’s couch, The New Woman [or feminist] transformed from an immature woman whose masculinity complex stagnated her natural development to mature femininity that is passive, chauvinistic, and narcissistic].

(García Dauder and Pérez Sedeño 2017, p. 157)

Chesler ([1972] 2005), a psychotherapist whose work has been foundational to feminist critiques of the “psy” disciplines from the 1970s to the present, studied numerous cases of women involuntarily hospitalized by fathers, brothers, or husbands in collusion with psychiatrists: “[A]ll were deeply hurt by institutional psychiatry, patriarchal therapists, and by highly abusive families” (Introduction, para. 25). These women shared a common trait: they defied traditional gender roles and were diagnosed as mentally unstable without a scientific basis (Introduction, para. 17; Chapter 1. Section: Women in Asylums: Four Lives, para. 1). Chesler ([1972] 2005) also observed that, because defiant female behavior was subject to pathologization, the scientifically unfounded diagnosis of a mental illness served to justify hospital institutionalization, the prescription of aggressive treatments, and the imposition of involuntary medicalization procedures (Chapter 1. Section: Women in Asylums: Four Lives). Even though, by the 20th century, medical science had discontinued harmful rest cures4 as well as surgical interventions of the female reproductive system—specifically, clitoral and ovarian mutilations—(García Díaz 2020, p. 2) to treat melancholy, hysteria, and other alleged pathologies, the findings of Chesler ([1972] 2005) revealed the perpetuation of mistreatment including overmedication, sedation, shock therapy, insulin shots, isolation, medical negligence, and physical and sexual violence (Chapter 2. Section: Asylums, para. 10).

The representation of women’s madness in Misiá Señora may thus be read as consistent with this broader historical pattern insofar as the protagonist’s diagnosis and institutionalization emerge not from identifiable clinical evidence—nor from a psychological crisis brought about sustained repression or overwhelming guilt resulting from infidelity—but rather from her violation of the moral expectations imposed on women. In fact, although Mariana adheres to patriarchal mandates by assuming traditional gender roles as wife, mother, and homemaker, she nonetheless commits what her society condemns as an unforgivable and disgraceful transgression: adultery. Within that moral framework, her improper behavior leads to her pathologization as mad and to her confinement in a psychiatric facility.

The narrative portrays the sanatorium as a spine-chilling place. Behind its walls, those who have been hospitalized find themselves at the mercy of the asylum personnel who have the impunity needed to commit acts like physical restraint and psychopharmaceutical overmedication:

[…] despertó aquella mañana con el dolor trozándole los brazos pues la tenían atada y apenas si entendía de dónde aquel martirio que laceraba hasta los huesos y apretaba la sangre para que no corriera y la vaciara dejándola sin hálito y sin ningún calor porque estaba azulenca como una mariposa clavada en aquel catre no puede ser que a mí me esté pasando lo que sucede en las películas se le ocurrió de pronto pues alcanzó a entender que andaba encarcelada y drogada y sometida […] Empezó a gemir que quítenme las vendas no me voy a fugar me duele mucho […] [She awoke that morning with searing pain in her arms as she had been tied up and she barely understood where the pounding came that lacerated her to the bones and squeezed her blood so that it couldn’t flow and left her empty and breathless, without warmth because she was blue, like a butterfly nailed to the hospital bed, and it can’t be that this is happening to me, like something out of the movies, and she realized that she was caged and drugged and restrained […] She began to moan, take off the bandages, I’m not going to escape, I hurt so much].

(Ángel [1982] 2019, pp. 216–17)

This passage reveals a woman’s clear awareness of being restrained and medicated, and the shock upon realizing she is tied to a hospital bed. Her words show that, when she realizes the absurdity of her situation, she is able to react, articulating a promise, a commitment, a plea to put an end to her torture. Nevertheless, her agony is prolonged for an indefinite amount of time. The methods described are just the beginning of a chain of events that show that this is not an isolated case of violence, but rather part of a continuous pattern of abuse that is inflicted upon her at the mental hospital. Mariana calls the ruthless nurses who cruelly threaten, insult, and beat patients, “Draculas” or “vampires”. The actions of the “Draculas” are evident in the following passage:

[…] te hace falta una insulina para ponerte culitiesa, ya van a hacerte un choquecito para que veas candela, maricona, vio negro y la aporreó. Le zamarreó las mechas mientras seguía insistiendo ¡loca de mierda…! mañana te encorrientan pues no tienes corona, chiflada y puta, ¡mamarracha!, y la drácula saltó con su jeringa pues estaba emboscada […] [You need some insulin to stiffen you up, they’re about to give you a little shock so that you see sparks, dyke, and she blacked out and they beat her. They yanked her hair while shouting, crazy bitch…! tomorrow they’re going to fry you, you wear no crown, crazy whore, freak! and the Dracula lunged with her syringe and she was ambushed].

(Ángel [1982] 2019, p. 225)

This excerpt is free from euphemism. It is raw violence, an unsettling brutality. On top of revealing the insults, humiliations, and abuse that the patients are subjected to, this passage provides information about medical procedures used in the psychiatric facility—electroshocks and insulin shots—which are used as disciplinary measures, rather than treatments to cure patients. It is also critical to note the military vocabulary and the image of an injection like an element of torture. Additionally, just like women in war, these patients are victims of sexual violence: “[…] te levantan la bata para clavarte las agujas en las nalgas cuando vas caminando para el baño y allá te sobajean […] la apercuellaron entre tres y una empezó a meter los dedos por entre la vagina cuchicheándole puta […]” [They lift your nightgown to jab needles in your buttocks when you walk to the bathroom and there they grope you […] they grabbed her by the neck between the three of them and began to shove their fingers in her vagina whispering whore] (Ángel [1982] 2019, pp. 215, 221–22). Without metaphor to soften it, the brutality is stark. Within the sanatorium, horror hangs in the air.

Beyond acknowledging the violence inflicted upon Mariana during her confinement in the psychiatric hospital, critics have not examined in depth the protagonist’s reasoning processes or the actions she undertakes while institutionalized. Betancur (2007) argues that the cruelties she endures lead her to recognize that her only viable strategy for survival is to engage in a “game of appearances” to secure her release and return home (p. 66). Yet, asserting that she understands the necessity of such a strategy also implies that she retains sufficient lucidity to devise a course of action for obtaining her freedom. Indeed, an intensifying unease grows when Mariana is sent to the second floor of the institution, a space where the permanently institutionalized patients lie in even more deplorable conditions: “[…] tendidas y otras tiradas en el suelo con las miradas hueras y lejanas las bocas semiabiertas […] todas hechizadas cayéndoles la baba y malicientas reptando algunas mientras las otras yermas […]” [Lying down and others thrown on the floor with empty, distant gazes and mouths agape […] all tranced, drooling, and spiteful, some crawling while others lie barren] (Ángel [1982] 2019, p. 223). The terror that the protagonist feels is such that, aware of how vulnerable she is and that her liberation depends on her husband and medical authorities, she elaborates a plan to get released:

Voy a volar cual gavilana aunque tú pongas mil aldabas, mi amiga mi vampira. Me haré la pánfila cuando entre y él esperando el frenesí o el estupor con que me cubro para embaucar los trufadores, los mindangos falaces que pregonan virtud y obtienen la batuta ¿qué tal Arlén?, ¿los niños cómo están? Saludaré como si hoy fuera ayer y aquí no pasó nada, pues fui la adúltera, la insana, la madre sin entrañas que se ausentó de pronto de los deberes […] Se retoca la curva de las cejas mientras le hace un mohín picante a la que está observándola, polvo compacto en las mejillas, lápiz de labios […] y cepillas los cabellos, dos toques de Eau savage […] y un poco aquí y otro de allá, vivaz, equilibrada, y el médico observando mi franca mejoría, mi desparpajo lúcido que hará pronosticar que esta semana mismo voy a salir de este jardín florido con jaulas despobladas y gritos en las noches y rejas afiladas que allanan, densas, los pulmones. [I’m going to fly like a hawk no matter how many bolts you lock, my friend, my vampire. I will play the fool when I enter, and he, expecting the frenzy or stupor with which I will cloak myself to deceive the swindlers, the false charlatans that preach virtue with a beating stick, “How are you Arlén? “And the children, how are they?” I will greet him as if it were yesterday and here nothing happened, that I was an adulterer, insane, the heartless mother who abandoned her duty […] She retouches the curve of her eyebrows while making a flirty pout to the one watching her, compact powder on her cheeks, lipstick […] brushed hair, two spritzes of Eau du Savage […] a little here and a little there, lively, balanced, and the doctor observing my improvement, my lucidity, prompting his prognosis that this very week I will leave this flowering garden—empty cages and screams in the nights and razor-sharp bars that slice deeply through lungs].

(Ángel [1982] 2019, pp. 226–27)

This passage demonstrates that although Mariana is aware that she broke the sacred vows of matrimony and neglected the sublime role of motherhood, her words are not marked by regret, culpability, or any sense of wrongdoing that might have precipitated a mental collapse. In fact, although the protagonist is aware that she committed an indecorous act, she appears to be more focused on finding a way to secure her release. Mariana thus consciously decides to exhibit sensibility and self-control, not only before Arlén but, more importantly, before the medical authority. While inside the sanatorium, the protagonist resolves to present herself impeccably—after all, societal expectations assume that any rational woman should be interested in getting fixed up—and to approach her husband affectionately and the doctor calmly. Although Navia (2006) interprets this passage as a moment of mental clarity that allows Mariana to remain sufficiently aware and deliberate in her behavior to facilitate her release from the asylum (p. 36), this spark of lucidity should not be understood as being a crack through which reason filters a state of madness, but instead as a temporary decline in the effects of sedation, a moment in which the medication administered no longer keeps her in a state of stupor. As such, Mariana does not need to pretend to be sane because she has always been stable. Since belligerence and obedience will be used to label a woman insane or normal, the protagonist deliberately chooses to be cooperative and docile. The protagonist’s strategy is clearly not that of a madwoman; rather, it is of someone capable of reason, who adjusts her behavior to attain a goal.

It is important to note that, though her confinement shapes a wounded and violated body, a submissive and defeated female body, the oppressive discourse does not manage to silence the protagonist. Mariana continued to speak profusely during her reclusion in the psychiatric facility, just like she had been doing throughout the entire story. Her voice, at times the scream that is heard inside the walls of the sanatorium, serves as a testament to a resolve that refuses to be silenced. Her voice, accompanied by the echo of her female ancestors, covers hundreds of pages and creates a text that, perhaps, is the only vestige of her grim experiences. Likewise, it should be observed that the tone that predominates the story, besides being tragic, is extremely biting. The protagonist’s diatribe against her husband resurfaces when, in the psychiatric facility, she describes him: “[…] con su cabeza de jíbaro, galante y fornicario, pelele peinadito […]” [With his shrunken head, gallant and lewd, a well-groomed puppet] (Ángel [1982] 2019, p. 213). Sarcasm overflows in how she portrays Arlén, who, as much as he tries to be elegant, is nothing more than a promiscuous, small-minded good-for-nothing. “¿Qué tal mi amor…? ¿No más alarmas de desfiles en el carro de bomberos?” [How are you my love…? Are there no more sirens from parades of firetrucks?] (Ángel [1982] 2019, p. 226), the protagonist inquires, alluding to a parade in which a group of men, Arlén included, dressed like women. Nevertheless, the barbs directed at her husband are not expressed openly; instead, they are unspoken, confined to Mariana’s thoughts, like the record of abuse she suffered during her confinement.

After the protagonist is released from the mental institution, she returns to the life that destiny drew for her, to grow old in a marriage marked by mutual disdain, to settle into a kingdom of gossip within a conservative framework. However, the protagonist’s ability to think and hold an opinion never wavers. The verbal affronts formed in her mind are the last bastion of an unbreakable spirit, the last trace of any kind of agency. The impotence must be profound. While she was locked up for adultery, an unfaithful, vice-ridden, deplorably behaved husband remains free, just because he is a man.

4. Conclusions

Misiá Señora provides a platform to discuss how discriminatory medical norms use mental illness diagnoses and institutionalization as instruments of female domination. Within the novel, the diagnosis of madness—unsupported by scientific evidence—functions as an artifice that legitimizes the corrective interventions. The protagonist’s hospitalization, in turn, does not arise from clinically demonstrable pathology but rather operates as a punitive measure triggered by her transgression of gendered codes of conduct imposed by the patriarchal social order. Psychiatric confinement and treatment thus function as exemplary sanctions designed to correct behaviors that threaten normative models of femininity. Confinement persists only until social equilibrium is restored—until the protagonist is deemed to have “returned to sanity” and can resume her domestic routines and socially prescribed duties as a proper lady of society. Misiá Señora thus demonstrates how old pyres can take on new significance, and how modern-day pyres masked as medical discourse do not burn the body, instead the soul.