Amparo Dávila or The Horror of Being a Woman

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Felipe Oliver Fuentes

The short story «The Houseguest» by Amparo Dávila surprises with its frankly ominous atmosphere. The horror in the story emerges from the representation of a woman tormented by a strange creature. This work analyzes how –through several textual strategies, such as limited focalization and information dosing, among others– the narrative voice manages to build an ambiguity around the story, enabling the fantastic effect that Flora Botton Burlá defines as essential to the genre. In addition, the work proposes a complementary interpretation of the story based on the function of the impossible in the ideological context. Focusing on the essay «The Seven Veils Of Fantasy» by Slavoj Žižek, the presence of the houseguest will be interpreted as a phantasmatic projection created by the narrator herself in order to avoid the horror of her daily life.

Article Details

How to Cite
Fuentes, Felipe Oliver. “Amparo Dávila or The Horror of Being a Woman”. Brumal. Revista de investigación sobre lo Fantástico, 2019, vol.VOL 7, no. 2, pp. 55-66, doi:10.5565/rev/brumal.593.
Author Biography

Felipe Oliver Fuentes, Universidad de Guanajuato

Coordinador de la Maestría en Literatura Hispanoamericana,  Departamento de Letras Hispánicas de la Universidad de Guanajuato