clarice lispector's the body

The book 'On the World of Literature' by Norman Spencer contextualizes Clarice of The Body's writings. This narrative, explored by Spencer between pages 786 and 790 of the book, employs an allegory of past divine experience, as recorded in most biblical early writings, to portray concepts and beliefs as they existed at the time Clarice was writing.
To summarize, the body is represented as a corporeal being with subjectivity in the short story of the body. It describes the relationship between personality and corporeality. Clarice, according to Spencer, expresses the notion that in order to comprehend the body, it is necessary to understand that the mind has no sex (Geok-Lin 789). Therefore what is mind and the sex are entirely different systems thus the duals system of understanding the body.
Lispector also presents an idea that to comprehend the body; it is imperative to underscore the bodily features of self and break them from other mental faculties and the role in social places (Csabai and Eros 101). Due to the dualism, the boy ought to be treated with the suspicion it deserves. On focusing on the life of women, Clarice compares them to a commodity that has to be maintained so as to ensure that men are enticed and as an object of appraisals by others. Also she goes further to provide for a characteristic that is common to men and women. Clarice states that the body is vulnerable, but the extent of vulnerability differs from the genders (Lispector, 780). This is because the body itself is susceptible to illnesses that cast the possibility of death in the human life. To women though, Lispector feels that the body ought to be treated like a doll and a passive object due to more vulnerability. To bring this to perspective, Clarice uses the allegory of a child born outside the normal biological processes with no sex between the parents to show that the understanding if the body can sometime be above the description, explanation nation and understanding that it scientific.
The major debate in this short story as Spencer notes is on the corporeality of the body. Clarice presents the body of a human being as corporeal which idea is based on the philosophy and scientific knowledge in the major area of embodiment theory. According to her, the views on beauty, existence, and body as regularly shown in the dominant cultures are reinventions. She takes an approach of the feminist that the opposition of the between body and mind is correlated to the male and female tension and contends that women have bodies that are more corporeal (Lispector, 145). On this topic, a strong debate arises between feminists who represent the subjectivity and the corporeality of the body on the one hand and the views of the realist who argue that corporeality is based on assumptions of confronting the sexed differences.
Evidently, the debate continues since Clarice as an early feminist regards embodiment with suspicion and even represents in the story the possibility of certain happenings without an explanation of any scientific nature (Lispector, 55). The debate between the two factions seems to be far from over as the feminists maintain that the body is the marker of differences in class and race while the realist argues that the sexual differences are a natural consequence.
The major method of delivering the message in the short story as Norman notes are the use of elegance in the writing and the constant creation of rhythm and flow to properly communicate the precise message to her readers. Perhaps this is because she had had a thorough engagement with the language and that at the time she was writing on the body; she had undergone so much refinement in literary writing. She mastered the art of making words do what they were not originally intended to do (Corner 16).
The body work as done by Clarice Lispector was not work in its abstractness. In fact, the Spencer notes that the short story of Lispector and the consequential debates earlier discussed was heavily influenced by the very many prevailing factors as was then. However, it is the understanding of the history of Jesus Christ that helps in understanding the work by Clarice. Particularly, the history of the Church of Sepulchre places the story of Jerusalem in context (Lispector 68) which explains that Jesus was born in Nazareth and crucified at a place called Golgotha and later buried at an empty tomb before being resurrected.
The knowledge of the history of Jerusalem is also important to understanding the essay of the Body. In this country, the prevailing idea was that the life of a human being is predetermined in the universe (Corner 55). As a result, it was believed that life breeds certain philosophical problems with free will and the science as it causes obviation of the laws of cause and effects. The prevailing idea in Jerusalem from where Jesus lived, therefore, shows the difficulty in maintaining the different ideas of vice and virtues.
Thirdly, the understanding of the Zionism movement also helps in understanding the coming of messiahs and persuasion of the Jews to return to Palestine and be amenable to assimilation into the Western culture. It also reveals that there was tension between the Jews and the Nazi and the later discussions led to the internationalization of Jerusalem through inter-country discussions and a series of declarations. Overall, it can be said that the story of Jesus of Nazareth and that of the history of Jerusalem both contributes to understanding the story of the Body by Clarice. It is based on the premise that one will be able to decipher and to understand the story based on the mysterious birth of a son without the scientific explanation.
Apart from the influences that impacted on the writing of the short story, Spencer notes that the contents and merits of the work were affected by certain contextual factors prevailing at the time (Spencer 786). At the time of her writing, there existed a lot of critics of her work majorly from Brazil as her writings were majorly sexist.
The second context is her literary skills at the time of writing the short story on the Body. Her thirty years of experience in writing was an impetus in developing unique topics which had attracted widespread criticism. Spencer notes that she presents her feminist ideas without the slightest of worries (Lispector, 168). This was the impetus in her taking challenges of the societal times as it was then. She was able to take the challenge by her publisher without minding the growing critics from Brazilians that her stories were near pornographies.
Another impetus was the religious thinking of the time. At the time of writing, Spencer states that there was a widespread practice of Judaism as the ancient monopolistic practice of religion. The works is an evidence of the elements of Judaism in the works (Geok-Lin 787). Her creation of the story around the birth of Jesus is informed by the fact that she was born to a Jewish family before being transplanted to Brazil. Her knowledge of the biblical teachings on Jesus, therefore, has easily informed the flow in n the short story of the human body.
In conclusion, it is evident from the above contextual analyses of the Book by Norman Spencer that several influences of the time were responsible for the working on the short story on the Body by Clarice Lispector. Additionally, the debate on corporeality of is unlikely to end any time soon since the opponents of feminism movement have also taken their stand so firmly.
















Works Cited
Corner, John. Communication Studies: A Reader. Arnold, 1998.
Csabai, M and F Eros. "Bodies in transition: The unbearable lightness of the traditionless self." Journal of European Psychoanalysis 8(9) (1999): 101.
Geok-Lin, and Norman A. Spencer. One World of Literature. WORLD 9OO, 1993.
Lispector, Clarice. A hora da estrela. 1977. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1998.
—. A via crucis of the Body. Rio De Janeiro, 1998.