Mythical Origins and Utopia

From the point of view of setting and action both Mal de amores and Arráncame la vida follow the norms of conventional realism though Mal de amores incorporates fantastical and mythical elements which have a dislocating effect on the reader. Here the tension between the mythic and utopian on the one hand and the harsh realities of revolutionary struggle on the other reflect Bartra’s theories of melancholy and metamorphosis. At the level of character analysis, Emilia is torn between the desire for sameness and the need for change reflecting the contradictory national yearning for stability and nostalgic return to a mythic past on the one hand, and an equally powerful desire for social change and modernity on the other.

Myth regresses to the childhood and innocence of humanity. Mal de amores begins with an atmosphere of innocence, myth and magic. During the early years of Emilia’s life, the Sauri family is blissfully happy. Emilia displays the innocence and wholeness of young humanity. The element of innocence, complemented by a sense of order and harmony, is evoked in the way Emilia’s parents seek to protect her from the negative aspects of the world, and in her games in the garden with Daniel where they sing nursery rhymes and seal their pledges of eternal friendship and love. During her childhood, Emilia spends long hours at the Cuenca home whose doors are closed in order to keep the outside world at bay: ‘era una casa que tenía la puerta cerrada porque en Puebla las puertas siempre se han cerrado, como si un continuo temor al mundo de la calle cercara las moradas’ (p. 33). Though Emilia’s childhood world gives the impression of wholeness and tranquility, it remains a closed and isolated place where privilege appears to be ordained by nature rather than contrived by society. Here again we note the ambivalence of Mastretta’s fiction: myth suggests the cyclical, the eternal, resistance to change and progress.