Who narrates me?

A brief inquiry about Louise and Ana in short stories by Kate Chopin and Clarice Lispector

Abstract

“The story of an hour” (1894), by Kate Chopin, and “Amor” (1950), by Clarice Lispector, take part in the tradition of women’s writing (écriture féminine) using short format literature to explore the theme of domestic and marital (un)happiness. Both short stories narrate in the third person the experiences of a solitary rapture in the lives of their protagonists, Louise and Anne, respectively. Centered on Wayne C. Booth’s model of division between author, implied author, and narrator and Gérard Genette’s reflections on these narrative instances, this investigation assumes that the authors are not the ones narrating the intimate experiences of these characters, but voices created by them. Who has the privilege of those voices? Based on part of the vast critical fortune of the authors, this study examines the hypothesis that the identity of those who perform the narrative function in these short stories varies according to the interpretation we make of the stories and their characters.