Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Decimonónica

Volume

13

Issue

2

Publisher

Decimonónica

Publication Date

2016

First Page

1

Last Page

17

Abstract

Juana Manuela Gorriti’s novella Peregrinaciones de una alma triste (1876) opens in a most Romantic vein: Laura, the protagonist, suffers from tuberculosis and is subjected to arsenic poisoning by her doctor in an attempt to cure her.1 As her doctor prescribes “mañana doble dosis; triple, pasado mañana” (4), he declares, with the zeal of a true believer, “niña mía [. . .] desde hoy comienza usted a tomar para curarse aquello que a otros da la muerte: el arsénico. Arsénico por la mañana, arsénico en la tarde, arsénico en la noche…¡Horrible! ¿no es cierto?” (4). The lovesick Laura promptly shatters this Romantic scene by rejecting his prescription.2 She dumps his arsenic into her handkerchief and proceeds to steal out of the house and into the world. From this moment on the novel unfolds into an episodic travel narrative that takes the protagonist through Chile, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, and Brazil. In these newly independent nations, Laura experiences beautiful landscapes that welcome her at the same time that she encounters political geographies that are hostile to her as a woman. As her story takes shape, first recounted directly to a friend and then in letters to the same, Laura’s character describes an alternative mode of being female and Latin American in the nineteenth century. Rejecting patriarchal social limitations upon women, Laura’s strength grows as she eschews convention to find her cure in travel and in developing an ethical relationship with the material world.

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