Violence in Confinement: Obsessive Metaphors in the Works of Amparo Dávila and Leonora Carrington

Abstract

In the works of Amparo Dávila and Leonora Carrington there is the presence of elements that are repeated systematically and obsessively, contributing to the poetics of both authors with a particular style. A crucial circumstance that is insistently manifested in their narrative is the reinstatement of confinement spaces where his or her protagonist experiences extreme physical or psychological violence. For Dávila, a reiterative aspect of her work is the vulnerability suffered by her characters when they become the victims of their living environ. In contrast, for Carrington, the violence of confinement is established in an institutionalized way. In both authors, the self-imposed domestic order or the chaotic violence inflicted produces supernatural or strange beings or situations; identifying the types of violence in seclusion spaces and the obsessive metaphors that it produces, through the psychocriticism of Mauron, is the objective of this article.