Upon hearing such a statement Teresa asks Sab if he is about to
reveal some conspiracy among the blacks. Sab, in turn, assures her
that she is in no way threatened, political upheaval is not his calling.
His passion for Carlota defines him, and if the thought of bathing “in
the blood of the whites” has ever crossed his mind it is because the
whites belong to the society that separates him from his beloved.
Uncannily enough, all this talk suddenly makes Teresa see Sab in a
different light. She forgets his color and class “[…] and perhaps she
no longer envied Carlota so much for her beauty and the joy of
becoming Enrique’s wife […]” (100).
Now it is Sab’s turn to be blind. It is unclear at this point whether
Avellaneda is protesting against the horrors of slavery or describing
the pangs of passionate, unrequited love.
“My life! Do you realize what my life is? […] I don’t even have
a country to
defend, because slaves don’t have a country; I don’t have
responsibilities, because
the duties of a slave are that of a beast of burden […] If the
white man had at least
left those born with dark skin in their woods, there, they
would have loved a
woman of their own color […] But no, the black man does
not even have the
privileges given to wild animals […]” (107)
In this monologue, Sab could very well be Avellaneda’s double.
Avellaneda began writing the novel in Bordeaux, shortly after having
left Cuba, and finished it in Galicia, “[…] apparently as a means of
passing the time in a period which was a difficult one for her”
(Harter 125). She has left home (Cuba) behind to come and live in
the mother country, which was supposed to be the real home in the
first place. But the departure from Cuba, however, turns Cuba into a
lost home, and consequently renders Spain “unhomely.” Like Sab,
Avellaneda has no country. Like Sab, she has not the privileges given
to wild animals because at that moment in time, because society is
coming between her and the man she loves (Ricafort). This marriage did not take place, for her stepfather refused to give her inheritance.
With this broken engagement, perhaps Avellaneda feels that she will
never love or be loved again.
Sab, too, feels the same way when he utters, “No woman can love
me […]” (107). What he is in fact saying is that no “white” woman
can love him. But he is wrong. Suddenly Teresa declares herself to
be that woman who will love him. Sab’s reaction is, “You would offer
me consolation when she is sighing with pleasure in a lover’s arms!”
(108). It is this jealousy that will kill him, for Sab dies at the same
hour that Enrique and Carlota receive their nuptial blessing.
“Five years later, the romantic heroine is a tearful and unhappy
middle class wife, suffocated in a mercantile and speculative
atmosphere that has destroyed all her youthful illusions. […]
romanticism has given way to realism” (Harter 134-135). The novel
ends in a 19th century world of commerce and industry. Normally, it
is the unknown that should be frightening, but what could possibly
be more familiar – or less threatening – than this middle class
couple?
By taking into consideration the different meanings of the word
homely Freud points out how the term becomes increasingly
ambivalent. “[…] until it finally merges with its antonym
unheimlich. The uncanny (das umheimliche, the unhomely) is in
some way a species of the familiar (das heimliche, the homely)”
(134). This paradox, however, does not express a tautology. Rather,
this slipping and sliding of meaning suggests the identity of a
difference and the difference of an identity. The terms never fuse,
they remain apart, and this being apart allows them to come in
contact with each other at different moments in time. Unhomely is
the way of being at home in the world, and also at home, in privacy.
Homely is the way of not being at home in the world.
The result is sheer terror and anxiety; this homely couple, Enrique
and Carlota, one a species of the other, living in the interstitial
immediacy of the “post”, of the future. This is the aftermath that
homes the past. Enrique and Carlota have apparently arrived there
unharmed. They are still alive. The only problem is that Carlota is
unhappy, but then again, she was always unhappy, she could very
well have a pattern of suffering. This is the virgin who yearned for
the virgin soil of Cuba, who is a virgin no more, and whose virginity cost Sab his life. Perhaps this is her nature, and perhaps indeed this
angel of Heaven is also a weeping diabolical doll that brings death
and destruction to those who love her, and wealth to those who do
not. The only time Carlota admits that she is happy is after she has
lost her father, her brother, Teresa, and Sab. “What are all of them
compared to your love?” she asks Enrique (132). This was the future.
Works Cited or Consulted.
Avellaneda, Gertrudis Gómez de. Sab and Autobiography. Austin: UT
Press, 1993.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Bravo-Villasante, Carmen. Una vida romántica: la Avellaneda. Madrid:
Instituto de
Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1986.
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience, Trauma, Narrative, and
History. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UPress, 1996.
Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. New York: Penguin, 2003.
Harter, Hugh. Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. Boston: Twayne,
1981.
Kirkpatrick, Susan. Las Románticas, Women Writers and Subjectivity.
Liverpool:
Liverpool UPress, 1989.
Luis, William. Literary Bondage. Austin: University of Texas Press,
1990.
McClelland, I.L. The Origins of the Romantic Movement in Spain.
Liverpool: Liverpool
UPress, 1975.
Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. New
york: Prometheus,
1988.
Royle, Nicholas. The Uncanny. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Scott, Nina M., ed. Sab and Autobiography. Austin: UT Press, 1993.
Shaw, Donald. El Siglo XIX. Barcelona: Ariel, 1972.
Todorov, Tzvetan. La Conquête de l’Amérique, La Question de
l’Autre. Paris: Seuil,
1982.
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1 A criollo/a was a Spaniard born in the colonies, in this case, Cuba.
1 The Spanish word criollo comes form the verb críar – “to be
raised.” Thus, it implies that the criollo has been raised in such and
such a place, in this case, Cuba.
1 At that time Cuba remained a Spanish colony. There was no Cuban
nationality per se, although there was a Cuban identity. This identity
could have different aspects. In other words, it could have to do with
simply living in Cuba, or being born there.