Focusing on La Muerte y la Doncella and/or 2666, consider the extent to which knowledge about their specific social/political/historical contexts is essential for understanding the play/novel?
In this paper I will discuss how knowledge of Chilean society, politics and historical events during Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, are essential in understanding Ariel Dorfman’s play “La Muerte y la Doncella’. I will discuss the characters in ‘La Muerte y la Doncella’ and I intend to show how historical events in Chile and its societal structures greatly influence the characters in this play
Following social uncertainty, the Chilean Socialist party together with other political parties formed the Unidad Popular which saw the Socialist Party leader,
…show more content…
He represents the well-meaning efforts of human rights lawyers to resolve the wrong-doings of the Pinochet government by creating the truth commission. He appears to be a well-intentioned character, who believes in the justice system will do it’s best to hold ‘trials’ in an effort to find the truth. His dominance over his wife at home is evident and we learn of how he cheated during Paulina’s captivity, which could be seen as one example of how ‘los desperecidos’ impacted on the lives of their loved ones and family. Gerardo doubts of his wife’s reasons and his apologies for her actions to Roberto, the alleged torturer, are a clear indication of how this ‘machismo’ culture perceives women. ‘Man practice a very efficient social and emotional division of labour, the official wife, to whom the man refer as ‘the mother of my children’, provides respectability, raises a man’s children, provides him with domestic services and receives the security of a public moral claim to his resources, whereas his outside wife provides pleasure, sexual variety, excitement and companionship’ (Hirch et Al,