The Deceptive Defense of a Woman Scorned: The Unreliable Narrator and Her Reworking of the Truth in Marina Mayoral’s Casi perfecto

Galician author Marina Mayoral has maintained that her crime fiction rarely contains obvious, indisputable truths, as she generates several conceivable interpretations that require the reader to draw conclusions on her own, thus behaving like a veritable detective or juror who must make connections, question the accuracy of the narrator’s version of events, and read against the grain. The female protagonists in these novels are often portrayed as either assassins or accomplices to the murder of a male character, motivated typically, as Mayoral herself argues by “el deseo de venganza por aquello de lo que a ti te han desposeído” (Cornejo-Parriego 818). Curiously, these women typically avoid punishment, due, in part, to the ingenious articulation of their innocence. In keeping with the style she cultivates in her previous narratives, the novelist’s female protagonist and first-person narrator in her epistolary noir novel, Casi perfecto (2007), is a writer by trade whose representation of reality and herself are, at times, contradictory and hence disorienting for even the most discerning of readers. Unlike third-person omniscient narration, the epistolary format of the novel provides the reader with a limited window into the narrator’s inner life and thought processes while it simultaneously allows Mayoral to highlight for her audience just how difficult it can be to decipher the hidden interiorities or intentions of a first-person narrator. In response to the accusation of her youngest son, Peque, that she plotted the perfect murder of his father (her ex-husband), modeling it after the fictional homicide of one of her male protagonists, Ana—Mayoral’s narrator—drafts a letter in which she unfalteringly maintains her innocence while unrepentantly rationalizing her questionable behavior and decisions through the years. As she composes her defense, Ana engages in a dual exercise of rhetoric and autobiographical self-fashioning—a term I borrow from Stephen Greenblatt’s examination of the structure of selfhood as evidenced in literary texts of the English Renaissance—with the aim of convincing both her implicit and explicit reader of her coherence and authenticity and, thus, exonerating herself in the process. Nevertheless, Ana undermines the original purpose of her epistle by either neglecting or brazenly refusing to conceal her character flaws, self-contradictions, and actions, not to mention her anger and frustration in response to her son’s accusations, as well as the deliberately ambiguous nature of her text and motivations. As her unintended—or perhaps intended—audience, we therefore come to question both who she claims to be and the very reliability and purpose of her account. Echoing Robert Spires’s analysis of Camilo José Cela’s La familia de Pascual Duarte (1942), the missing elements of Ana’s narrative make it difficult to discern whether she is good or evil, a victim of systemic injustice or controller of her own destiny and there is a discrepancy between the image she seeks to project and the image she seems to (un)intentionally present.^[1]

In this essay, I depart from Roberta Johnson’s belief that Mayoral’s narrator-protagonist is indeed a reliable one, by identifying her many inconsistencies, her use of irony, and, as she herself discloses, her possible motivations for wanting her ex-husband dead. With the help of Dorrit Cohn’s seminal studies on discordant narration and narrative consciousness in self-narrated monologues, I explore the paradoxical manner in which Ana fashions herself as a way to simultaneously control the narrative and persuade her reader into accepting her version of the truth, while I also maintain that the narrator’s defense doubles as a feminist apology, or self-justification, for her actions and premeditated crime. As a wife and mother who rarely felt appreciated by her ex-husband and sons, and as a female writer who not only had to make significant sacrifices in her personal and professional life, but also fight to be respected as an intellectual equal by her male contemporaries, the narrator’s account reads as a vindictive, and feminist, settling of scores. Not only does Ana see and paint herself as a woman scorned, but it becomes clear to the reader that she has become disenchanted with a pervasive patriarchal culture—both at home and in her profession—that has underestimated her contributions and struggles, as well as her intelligence and competency. In this apology, the narrator defends her innocence and desire to establish what truly happened, while justifying her actions and taking on her accuser and enemies by not only challenging them to empathize with her experiences and accept her representation of reality, but also by daring them to interpret the signs that she has placed artfully throughout her text.

Mayoral’s novel plays on the themes of irony and contrived ambiguity while doubling as a defiant, feminist reworking of the truth, something that echoes some of the epistolary tropes and narrative strategies of various seminal works from Hispanic literary history, namely Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz (1691) and Cela’s novel. Like these other texts—particularly the latter—Ana’s epistle doubles as an exercise in rhetoric in which the narrator is more concerned with generating a particular response in her audience than with representing the unadulterated truth. Like these previously mentioned texts, the narrator addresses her letter to a specific reader—her son—although I argue that the true identity of the implied interlocutor is left ambiguous deliberately, as Ana intends her “letter” to be read by a wider audience beyond just her son, for it is framed in the necessity to transmit a certain image of herself to others who may not know her. Reminiscent of Sor Juana’s Respuesta a Sor Filotea, what is central to Ana’s self-defense is her retelling of her life and family anecdotes from her perspective, but also as a way in which to vindicate her intellectual and professional pursuits and to illustrate for the reader the societal limits or unfair expectations that were imposed on her as a professional woman and mother.

As a literary genre, epistolary fiction has been associated, since its inception, with the notion of mimetic truthfulness from an ironic perspective (Bayer 2009). Gerd Bayer claims in his analysis of the form that writers like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in Werther, have questioned the reliability of epistolary narratives (174). The scholar argues that in epistolary fiction, it is with the narratee that the explicit reader tends to identify by default, particularly because of the use of the subject pronoun “you.” Moreover, Dorrit Cohn claims that epistolary narratives offer insight into the character’s or narrator’s innermost thoughts and emotions, thus allowing the reader to understand more deeply his or her experiences. Whereas Mayoral’s explicit audience may find itself initially identifying with Ana’s son, Peque, as it, too, must discern the truth from the lies, Ana’s objective is to convince the (explicit and implicit) audience by coaxing them into seeing reality from her perspective. On the surface, Ana’s letter is written for a unique narratee, which means that its content is not meant to communicate reality, but rather to endear Ana to the addressee; an addressee with whom she has maintained an intimate relationship and emotional connection and one who knows her and her idiosyncrasies well. By contrast, for the explicit addressee (whether it be Ana’s or Mayoral’s), the exclusive access to Ana’s self-defense and settling of scores, as well as to her personal revelations and airing of grievances to a family member, feels almost improper. As Cohn might argue, this intersection of the private and the public spheres suggests that the narrator consciously presents herself to an external audience who will pass judgment on her based on the information that she chooses to include or conceal in her self-defense. Consequently, the act of letter writing is, as Cohn says, a performative endeavor. Furthermore, as Thomas Koenigs observes in his examination of epistolary fiction published during the American Revolutionary period, epistolary correspondence involves not only the possibility of misinterpretation on the part of the reader, but also the inability to know the letter writer’s interiority fully (14). According to Koenigs, epistolary narratives tend to present characters “whose interiorities can only be known through ambiguous sources of information—their words” (Koenigs 15). With Cohn’s and Koenigs’s respective observations regarding the unreliability of the fictional letter writer and the performative nature of letter writing in mind, Ana’s use of the epistolary mode allows her to manipulate the notions of narrative reliability and epistemological certainty.

Seeking to defend herself against her son’s accusation of serious moral misconduct, in the classical sense, Ana’s epistle adopts a composition similar to that of Plato’s Apology of Socrates, while also echoing the formal rhetorical makeup of Sor Juana’s Respuesta a Sor Filotea and other examples of early modern women’s writing. As we shall see below, the narrator adopts the rhetorical devices of narratio (which comprises the rhetor’s anecdotes that are designed to fashion a unified and stabilized image of self), concessio (in which the rhetor acknowledges a point made by her opponent, before retorting with greater force), as well as ethos (an underscoring of her good character and experience as a writer), and pathos (a recounting of the various forms of suffering endured by the writer) to appeal to the sympathy of the reader. Ana attempts to use logos (in which she appeals to the intellect of the reader by making clear connections between ideas), but does not avoid making logical fallacies, as we shall see below. In Rhetoric, Aristotle argues that in a judicial species—a speech that takes place before a court or jury—the orator either inculpates someone or defends herself regarding a past controversial incident. Contingent upon the effectiveness of the speaker’s argumentative skills, the audience must then determine whether or not this past event was carried out in accordance with or contrary to the law and, consequently, if the speaker herself is to be trusted or not. Aristotle argued in the Rhetoric that rhetoric is “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” to shape public opinion regarding a specific subject. Because of this, Plato criticized Aristotle’s understanding of rhetoric, arguing that it could be used just as easily to deceive or manipulate. Although Ana’s speech is communicated via the written word, her epistle parallels the underlying characteristics and objectives of the judicial species, however she both inculpates her interlocutor and defends herself at the same time, to questionable degrees of effectiveness. Her anecdotes relating to the overcoming of obstacles as a female writer in a male-dominated field, as well as her mention of other tribulations, all serve a subversive rhetorical purpose that are designed to convince the audience of her authenticity and point of view. As Frederick Luciani has said of Sor Juana, the narrator of Casi perfecto engages in a complex and calculated process of literary self-fashioning that “serves both self-promotive and self-protective functions” (16). Ana’s epistle represents her ability to manipulate both her audience and distort the truth to her advantage. The narratio of her text allows the narrator/writer to represent and defend herself as a writer through writing—the only means at her disposal. Like Sor Juana, she attempts to defend her intellectual vocation through a literary act based on her supposed erudition, her control of useful paradigms for writing the self, and her exploitation of certain rhetorical devices. In the first pages of her letter, Ana announces that she would like to defend herself (12) and asserts: “Por eso escribo, porque es mi manera de llegar a la verdad” (14). It is important to note, however, that both fiction and imagination are integral parts of the protagonist’s life as well as the perceptions of her own reality and self. Frequent allusions to the act of writing and fictionality, not to mention the fictionalization of elements from Ana’s external experience, complicate her supposed quest for truth. Near the end of her epistle, she reveals to her reader that “[e]scribiendo soy mucho más convincente y matizo mejor mis ideas” (237). Such an admission insinuates that writing allows her to convince the addressee of her version of the truth, which encompasses an incomplete reproduction of events. Furthermore, the verb “matizar” has its origins in the Vulgar Latin nubare, derivative of nuba in Latin, which suggests that not only does writing allow her to explain her thought processes, as one of the definitions of the word implies, but also that it is through writing that Ana intentionally blurs, or clouds, the truth. By employing and, at times, misusing the rhetorical appeals of ethos and pathos, Ana tries to varying degrees of success to make her perspective and character relatable and credible to both her audience and herself.

At first glance, Ana’s letter appears to be written in an arbitrary fashion—akin to a stream of consciousness or one-sided dialogue—as she returns to past events and missteps by way of analepsis before revisiting the narrative present. References to the colloquial spoken word, such as “tengo que decir,” “yo diría más,” “lo que quiero decirte,” “ya te lo he dicho,” or “te he hablado,” emphasize the oral, discursive nature of Ana’s letter, which complements and contrasts with the more formal, essayistic constructions of the epistle, such as “en resumen” and “vayamos ahora a otro punto,” for example. Nonetheless, it soon becomes evident that she has planned out shrewdly her argument with the rhetorical intention of simultaneously convincing her son (and larger audience) of her innocence and justifying her motives for his father’s death, while also rendering the truth indecipherable for her reader. In this light, her deliberate narrative zigzagging or de-chronologized narration of the past means that she is in complete control, while the reader is left without a clear understanding of the timeline of events that led to the death of the narrator’s husband. Furthermore, the repetition of contrary-to-fact constructions such as “quizá,” “como si,” the imperfect subjunctive, and other more subjective expressions such as “recuerdo,” “creo,” “no sé por qué,” or “no me acuerdo ahora” not only conflict with her recurrent use of the phrase “estoy segura,” but they also lend a degree of imprecision and fallibility to her account. These strategies, along with the presence of repeated contradictions, logical discontinuities, and omissions throughout the epistle, prove disorienting for the reader, thus providing the narrating subject with what Luciani might argue is a protective layer of ambiguity. Mayoral underscores the discordant configuration of her narrator’s text, as it reflects the double, conflicting structure of her simultaneous attempt to self-fashion and safeguard her integrity, while also engaging in a vicious counteroffensive launched at her accuser.

Hoping to discredit Peque and his hurtful accusation, Ana purports that her son is a deficient reader, or interpreter, of reality, for she claims that he distorts meaning and frequently misunderstands the facts that are presented to him, which, in turn, causes him to express himself ineffectively: “con frecuencia no percibes los matices de las palabras que oyes y eso te lleva a no matizar las tuyas” (40). Ana evidently believes that, because her son does not possess the necessary skills to interpret reality in daily life, he must not have the reading sophistication to detect unreliability at the narrative level, either. Perhaps for this very reason, before commencing her letter, she discloses in patronizing fashion that she will have to use “las palabras que puedas entender” (15). Anticipating that her son will not be able to see through her artful narrative techniques and rhetoric, Ana is able to control her own story and distort the truth, with the hope of manipulating and confusing her narratee into quietly accepting her defense.

Maryellen Bieder (2009) astutely observes in her examination of the novel that the evidence provided by the narrator does not always correlate with the image she tries so intently to portray to her addressee (359). These contradictions serve as clues that point to Ana’s duplicitous nature. While her ostensible objective is to convince her son of her innocence and earn back his trust and affection, she, counter intuitively, admits to him that she read his diary when he was a boy and, as a result, now knows more things about him than he could ever imagine—particularly his admiration for his father and his lack of affection for his mother. Ana strategically commences her epistle with this tidbit of information as if she were playing a game of chess. By revealing to her son that she is aware of this evidence against him and that, consequently, she knows more about him than he does about her, she can emotionally blackmail and remind him of her (narrative) power.

Whereas Ana’s letter is comprised of numerous family anecdotes, it is she who has complete jurisdiction over how they and various family members are remembered and documented for posterity, nevertheless, this is problematic, as even she alludes to her own memory’s deficiencies and her tendency to concoct stories. When addressing her “genetic” or collective gynocentric memory, she confesses that it may be “un ejemplo de mi capacidad fabuladora más que una muestra de memoria excepcional” (125–126). Although in her written testimony Ana originally sets out to establish the truth, she admits that in the end the facts and her interpretation of them might be distorted and fabricated (97). In her creative mind, the differences between fact and fiction are muddled and therefore, such is the case with her recreation of events. When referencing a trip she took with a former male companion while Peque lay in bed with a fever, Ana confesses that she cannot recall their vacation destination: “se me ha borrado de mi memoria por completo, como si no hubiera existido […] me sentí culpable por dejarte solo e intenté eliminar esa parte de mi vida” (119). Her ability to—conveniently and intentionally—forget certain details from her past because they provoke feelings of guilt is critical information for the reader, who must assess whether or not she also has suppressed memories of her husband’s murder for similar reasons. Consequently, relatively subtle acknowledgements such as these impel the reader to call into question the veracity of the entire account, for what Ana includes in the letter is just as important as what she chooses to omit.

Moreover, the narrator’s therapist observes that many of her childhood memories are in fact incidences of postmemory, or inherited remembrances passed down from her mother and grandmother that she herself never experienced. Whereas Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory relates to the children of Holocaust survivors, the fact that it embodies the experience of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth is relevant to Ana’s text for various reasons. Firstly, her personal and inherited memory reveals the presence of a female legacy and keen feminist consciousness, rooted in righting the wrongs perpetuated against the women in her family, and perhaps even against historical, erudite female figures with whom she identifies. Evoking Sor Juana’s Respuesta a Sor Filotea (1691), in her letter Ana attempts to justify her actions and addresses the allegations of her accuser in what appears to be a private mode of correspondence between two individuals. Nevertheless, like the nun’s famous epistle and as we have seen above, the identity of Ana’s intended audience is not entirely clear. Ana’s gendered (re)membering, or writing, means putting a body of thought back together differently, for her memories and version of events conflict with those of her male accuser. The inconsistencies present throughout her account reveal the narrator’s endeavor to dismantle conventional modes of representation and refute phallocentric discourse.

The reflective, creative act of writing allows her to not only justify herself and her transgressions, but it also permits her to recreate and edit the past through her own imagination. As a result of this imagination and her reinterpretation and invention of past events, Ana is able to render coherent that which she considers chaotic. The writing process also serves an exculpatory purpose, allowing Ana to evade (feelings of) despair and culpability for her inaction or offenses, while it also provides her with the ability to reflect on her life and make sense of it. With the aim of portraying herself as a victim of circumstance, not to mention the victim of a phallocentric, misogynistic reality, the narrator-protagonist deploys the writing process to give a voice to her challenges and suffering and, consequently, secure the sympathy of her reader. In a feminist sense, Ana employs her account to vindicate herself, sometimes regardless of the cost, and emphasize for her reader—be it her son or another entity—the many injustices she has experienced throughout her life simply because she is a woman. She delineates not only her physical defects, but also her husband’s numerous infidelities, and her family’s lack of acknowledgement of her professional demands and successes. We, conveniently for Ana, are not privy to her implied reader’s improbable response or version of events and the truth. This leaves us somewhat in the dark, regarding the veracity of her account and the image she portrays of herself in her writing. Narrating exclusively in the first-person and expressing only her feelings and versions of events, the truth, then, is incomplete and nebulous. As Elizabeth J. MacArthur claims, “[e]pistolary novels also lack the central, organizing authority a narrator provides. No one perspective orders the characters’ diverse points of view; no external voice evaluates them, suggests who to believe” (9). Likewise, identity is constantly edited, re-written, and fabricated to persuade others—and oneself—of one’s coherence and authenticity.

According to Cohn’s analysis of first-person narration, Peque functions as a listening “you,” or imaginary interlocutor, who remains disincarnated to the end. Conveniently for Ana, his physical absence signals his silence, lack of perspective, and inability to contest the narrator’s version of events. Much like what Cohn terms a “ghostly listener,” Peque is a mere sounding board for the self and, therefore, Ana’s entire text can be considered a silent monologue posing as spoken interlocution, a perennial self-address disguised as a self-defense or confession addressed to the Other (Peque). In effect, if Ana is simultaneously self-fashioning and engaging in self-address, we might conclude that the individual she hopes to convince of her own integrity as a subject is herself. Furthermore, in light of Cohn’s analysis, as the lone speaker in her text who recalls her own past and tells it to both a specific and non-specific third party and herself, the aim of Ana’s recitation is in fact a self-justification, even a confession, but also a means of self-preservation. Her entire epistle is intended to serve as a damning piece of evidence that favors her perspective over that of her son. Nevertheless, the text itself inadvertently reveals undesirable truths that are damaging to Ana and the integrity of her defense.

One of the most incriminatory, albeit subtle, pieces of evidence in Ana’s apology is her admitted preference for fiction over reality—a preference that may be logical, given her choice of profession, but one that also serves to underscore her disillusionment with the lingering machismo of the Franco years. She confesses that not only was the act of writing her salvation on more than one occasion, in both an intellectual and existential sense, but that she desperately worked, “huyendo de la realidad cotidiana para meterme en esa otra realidad ficcionalizada en la que el dolor tenía sentido” (162). Ana suggests here that, in her case, literature and, by extension, anything that allows her to negate an undesirable reality is not just exculpatory, as mentioned above, but also a therapeutic and necessary exercise. Not only could the act of writing allow her to create alternative truths, perhaps by defying societal expectations and subverting traditional gender roles, but it also gave her a “safe” outlet through which to channel her frustrations with her husband and her life as a wife and mother, and possibly even articulate and carry out her fantasies, as sinister as they might be. Writing, then, and the (re-)invention of truth is a political, if not feminist, enterprise for Ana. As we can see throughout her epistle, it allows her to shed light on the systemic oppression and sexism that have been constant sources of frustration in her personal and professional life, while also giving her the opportunity to create alternative realities and control her own narrative. Nevertheless, her overt preference for fantasy and her penchant for losing herself in it should be a red flag for the reader, as it may undercut her ability or desire to distinguish reality from fiction, or truth from invention.

As the sole authority of her narrative, Ana can manipulate, or distort, the facts to her own advantage while stressing the interconnectedness and fluidity of reality and fiction, or more specifically, the way in which life imitates art, or anti-mimesis. As she reveals to her narratee, “[t]engo que empezar diciéndote que la vida imita muchas veces al arte. Imaginas algo, lo escribes y después resulta que eso mismo sucede en la realidad” (39). Later, when describing a fictional character in one of her novels who shared a set of uncanny qualities with a young boxer that Ana met some time later, she recounts to her reader that “lo que me gustó fue que la realidad confirmara mi invención. Mi personaje hablaba como correspondía a su carácter, a su clase social, a su escasa instrucción. Yo lo inventé, le proporcioné un lenguaje peculiar, y la realidad ratificaba mi acierto” (39). The narrator does little to conceal the pleasure and pride she takes in seeing the fruits of her imagination reflected in an objective reality. As a female writer, the invention of an alternative reality provides her with a sense of authority and power that is not entirely possible in a male-dominated objective reality, but when objective reality imitates the writer’s inventions, she is made to feel invincible, even prophetic, and irreproachable. The narrative power and invincibility Ana enjoys as a female writer inevitably cause her to develop a degree of overconfidence, particularly in her interactions with anyone who might challenge her authority or interpretation of the truth.

Ana’s pride and carelessness also cause her to make mistakes at the narrative level in the form of self-contradictions and oversights. In response to Peque’s accusation that she modeled his father’s murder after a homicide she portrayed in one of her novels, the narrator remarks, “Pero ¡qué casualidad!, esa novela se reeditó el mismo año de la muerte de tu padre. Justamente ésa y no otras” (264). The irony of the words “¡qué casualidad!” or her tongue in cheek characterization of her deceased husband as “una joyita de hombre” (267), imply not only feelings of resentment and hostility towards her husband and son, but also discrepancies in her narration. After claiming that the similarities between the deaths of her spouse and a male character in one of her novels are nothing more than a mere coincidence, the narrator-protagonist finally concedes that a stronger correlation may indeed exist between the two crimes. This concession serves a rhetorical purpose, as it allows Ana to agree only partially with her accuser, thus suggesting that that which she refuses to acknowledge to be true is obviously fallacy. Ana insists that the similarities between her husband’s death and the death of her fictional character are purely circumstantial and that her familiarity with what happened in the novel only influenced her reaction to the events surrounding the homicide. “No descarto que lo ocurrido en la novela me llevase a actuar de modo similar ante circunstancias imprevistas y parecidas, pero más bien creo que la escritura funciona a veces como una premonición o como un presagio de lo que va a suceder. Es una especie de anticipación, una adivinación de algo que después ocurre” (49). These concessions, along with her assertions that “la vida imita muchas veces al arte” (39) and “la realidad ratificaba mi acierto” (39), are intended to exculpate her from the crime in question and instead prove her impressive intuition as a writer and her uncanny ability to influence objective reality. Nevertheless, as the creative architect behind the fictional homicide, and as someone who has acknowledged her partiality for fiction over reality, or truth, and a habit of employing fantasy as an escape from her problems in the real world, it becomes increasingly difficult for the reader to believe that Ana would not have choreographed her own husband’s mysterious death in much the same way.

Other oversights in the narrator’s defense that reveal to the reader her implacable temperament appear near the end of the novel, when Ana describes the sadness and guilt she feels regarding the premature passing of her mother, who, she claims died as a result of the heartache and shock brought on by her daughter’s divorce. Although she admits to Peque that she believes she is partially responsible in her mother’s death—and perhaps by extension, in the demise of her marriage— Ana is quick to place the bulk of the blame on her ex-husband for his many infidelities, but also on Susana, for providing her with the hard evidence of his indiscretions and thus making it impossible for Ana to ignore them. She insists to Peque:

Pero yo no era la única culpable. Si tu padre no me hubiera engañado tantas veces, y si Susana no me hubiera puesto al corriente de sus aventuras anteriores, yo no hubiera abierto aquel cajón donde tu padre guardaba el dinero y las fotos de sus amantes. Pensé que todos tendríamos que pagar algún día por el mal que le habíamos hecho a una persona tan inocente, tan buena y tan generosa, de la que sólo habíamos recibido cariño y ayuda. (274)

By opening “aquel cajón,” a figurative Pandora’s box, and learning certain painful truths about her already troubled marriage, Ana believes that she indirectly provoked her mother’s death. Whereas she senses that her mother has forgiven her for her “sins,” Ana claims that “yo no he podido perdonarme, ni perdonar” (275). These confessions, along with the declaration that “pensé que todos tendríamos que pagar algún día por el mal que le habíamos hecho” (275), can be interpreted as small clues that the narrator deposits throughout her defense which suggest to the reader that, at least from Ana’s point of view, her ex-husband’s homicide was a necessary and inevitable form of retribution for the various ways in which he hurt her through the years.

As seen in the portrayal of her husband’s indiscretions and their far-reaching implications for her, throughout her letter, Ana divulges her increasing frustration with male entitlement and the way in which her life has been influenced and shaped by the actions and desires of the men in her life. This frustration can manifest itself in the form of resentment and a keen sense of injustice. While addressing other allegations that Peque made against her in his childhood diary—that she flagrantly confesses to reading—Ana’s feelings of jealousy and her spiteful nature come to the fore. She uses Peque’s earlier accusations to paint him as an ungrateful and overly critical son and, consequently, as a highly tendentious and unreliable accuser. When he compares her inadequacies as a mother to the notable competence of others—namely, his father, or other women for that matter—she acrimoniously probes, “¿Y qué te dio tu padre para que a él lo adorases? […] ¿[Q]ué hizo él por ti que no haya hecho yo?” (120). Ultimately, Ana feels misunderstood because of what Peque, her husband, and phallocentric culture perceive to be her shortcomings and deems that she has been held unjustly to a lofty standard to which her husband has not. Professionally, she claims to have been denied the necessary time and space of her own, free from interruptions to succeed professionally. Sensing Peque’s feelings of resentment, she goes on to justify why she worked so many hours in her home office and had to be away from her children. Ana maintains that without the kind of recognition that prolific authors such as García Márquez receive, a female writer “pasa […] inmediatamente a ser alguien que no ha cumplido con sus obligaciones femeninas: una mala hija, una mala madre, una mala esposa…Una puta” (59). Ana is all too familiar with the perpetual sensations of guilt and inferiority imposed on her and the women of her generation for not espousing an endless list of unattainable feminine ideals. She resents these expectations and depictions of herself and women, in general, and, in the face of Peque’s accusations and his less than favorable characterization of his mother, she deems it necessary to rewrite both the truth and the image others have levied on her throughout her life.

Despite her attempts to use logos to appeal to the rational mind of her audience and provide it with hard facts and pertinent evidence to convince it of her innocence, Ana lays bare for her audience a dark, imperfect aspect of her personality. As we shall see, her credibility as a supposed authority of truth and justice is tarnished by her volubly judgmental nature. Spiteful, narcissistic, and xenophobic, in her self-narrated monologue, Ana rarely engages in true introspection or self-criticism, yet easily finds fault with practically everyone around her, which is, ironically, something that she condemns in Peque. Although she does little to conceal her favoritism for Xan, her older son, who she claims has always been more affectionate, obedient, and good-natured than Peque, she expresses her disapproval of Xan’s missionary work in Africa, because it takes him far away from home and ultimately diverts his attention from his mother: “Habiendo tanta gente a quien ayudar aquí, para qué diablos tuvo que irse a África. Su madre acusada de asesinato y él echando bendiciones a negros desconocidos…” (144). Resentful of what she considers to be Xan’s misguided priorities, Ana does little to conceal her racist inclinations and unrepentantly characterizes the “negros desconocidos” as “salvajes, maleantes y paganos” (156). Disparaging comments such as these that reveal the narrator’s prejudices and spite undermine both her credibility as a representative of truth and reason, not to mention the sympathy she hopes to inspire in her reader. Even so, Ana’s willingness to reveal her flaws to her audience signals a potential rhetorical strategy on her part, as she may seek to demonstrate that, although she may be guilty of these “lesser” infractions, her apparent candor in these situations demonstrates that she cannot possibly be lying about her innocence in her husband’s death.

Paradoxically, the second aspect of Ana’s narrative strategy is to connect with and earn the compassion of her reader (or accuser) by revealing her most vulnerable facets. Without fear or shame, Ana divulges her various physical defects, subsequent hardships, and experiences with injustice as a workingwoman and mother in a hostile patriarchal environment. Ana’s physical traits reflect her individual struggles, existential angst, and idiosyncrasies, and therefore can be deployed to appeal to the sympathy of the reader through both ethos and pathos, as they help the audience to identify not only with her feelings of victimization and otherness, but with her ability to surmount such obstacles as well. As Luciani claims in his analysis of Sor Juana, this discourse of tribulation allows Ana a kind of hagiographic self-fashioning, as it gives her life and actions an air of sanctity that perhaps they do not deserve entirely (Luciani 98). Ana describes herself as both “coja y tuerta” (19) and whereas in her youth she considers herself to be a victim of nature or circumstance, with the help of a family friend she eventually comes to accept her physical irregularities for their beauty, exoticism, and powerful charm, learning to use them to her advantage. When don Armando—the family friend—shows a young Ana the portrait of a particularly striking woman donning a ruff (or gola) and a black patch over her right eye, the little girl is reminded that despite, or even because of, her physical defects, she, like the artistic subject in her day, will be considered mysterious and, hence, even more desirable to her male counterparts. When he reveals to her that the painting depicts doña Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda, Princesa de Éboli—a powerful historical figure from sixteenth century Spain—Ana eventually views the noblewoman as an example to emulate. Don Armando assures her, “Tú pensabas que ser tuerta era un defecto que destruye la belleza, y ya ves cómo no es así, al contrario, puede convertirse en un poderoso atractivo si sabes llevar esa falta como la llevaba la princesa de Éboli” (20-21). With don Armando’s guidance, Ana comes to realize that not only does she have the power to transform what may be perceived initially as a negative or undesirable trait into an endearing one, but she can also influence the opinions that others have of her for her own personal gain. By sharing both these anecdotes and her vulnerability with her audience, Ana hopes to garner its sympathy and, as a result, gain authorial power and the ability to influence those who find themselves reading her apology.^[2]

Like Sor Juana, Ana de Mendoza serves as a feminist icon with whom Mayoral’s Ana can identify easily on numerous levels and from whom she takes inspiration. All three women have suffered tribulations and attempted to assert themselves in male dominated, misogynistic cadres—in domestic, political, and literary milieus—and experience varying degrees of male privilege and reproach for their unwillingness to conform to conventional norms of femininity. That Mayoral’s narrator recognizes the similarities that tie her to these two other women underscores for the reader that women have long been seen as inferior beings, whose reputation can be tarnished and manipulated to their accusers’ liking. More specifically, the parallels that Ana—or Mayoral—draws among three women who hail from different eras suggest that little has changed over the course of the last four centuries, at least vis-à-vis women’s experience. In this light, it is difficult to ignore the narrator’s (and author’s) cynicism and frustration provoked by the lack of progress on this front and the lasting impact of patriarchal norms in democratic Spanish society. Unlike her predecessors, however, Ana is able to control her reputation and avoids a (public) fall from grace. Because of her identification with these other highly misunderstood and criticized women, Ana forges a correspondence between female experiences with adversity in a highly patriarchal environment and the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge. Her epistle is not merely a self-defense, but rather an apology for workingwomen and mothers everywhere. It proves that she refuses to remain silent in the face of Peque’s accusation, which she interprets as an unjust and sexist indictment of her and her performance as a mother. Instead, she employs her voice not only to defend herself, but also to finally articulate the many years of frustration and emotional stress she has experienced as a consequence of her accuser’s unrealistic expectations of her and his unconcealed preference for his father.

Ana’s references to her tribulations and repeated experiences with gender-based discrimination—even within the confines of the home—allow her to make her case and seek the sympathy of her reader, while also providing her with the opportunity to openly condemn (the sexism of) her sons’ late father. Through analepsis, Ana describes a memory in which, upon revealing to her young sons that she has published a book, a four-year-old Xan declares “[l]as mujeres no escriben libros,” thus prompting Ana to wonder where he had heard such a thing, only to realize that in children’s books women rarely, if ever, were portrayed as professional writers. Ana quickly understands the extensive influence and pervasiveness of patriarchal indoctrination and how easily its messaging is assimilated by her young son, even when her (now ex-)husband assures her that he never said anything of the sort. Ana seems to recognize here that it does not matter if Xan’s and Peque’s father never articulated those exact words in their presence; because the sentiment is so ubiquitous in patriarchal culture—which includes the domestic sphere and the realm of children’s literature—it is nearly impossible to trace its origins or prevent a young child from falling victim to its problematic line of reasoning. Therefore, as a writer, mother, and feminist herself, Ana cannot help but appreciate how difficult it is to challenge patriarchal teachings, both professionally and at home. Subsequently, she repeats with disdain what she, undoubtedly, had heard throughout her youth—that “la escritura era una función masculina, tal como habían denunciado las feministas norteamericanas: la pluma, como la espada, habían sido a lo largo de los siglos instrumentos de los hombres, y la mujer que los utilizaba era mal vista por la sociedad” (31). Throughout her argument, it becomes apparent that she attempts to reclaim both the pen and the sword, attempting to prove to her reader that neither writing nor acts of violence are reserved exclusively for men. Instead, through her mastery and execution of several rhetorical or narrative techniques, her vast knowledge of literature, and her references to her own previous publications, Ana swiftly invalidates the misogynistic notion that women cannot write artfully, let alone publish and sell books to a heterogeneous reading public. Furthermore, in a rhetorical sense, as if to challenge this stereotype and the flawed logic of some men, not excluding her ex-husband and sons, by pairing the sword with the pen, Ana subtly, but perhaps intentionally, insinuates to the reader that she is equally capable of planning and executing a violent crime, such as homicide.

If we read her letter as an apology in the classic sense, or as a tacit acknowledgement of her involvement in the death of her husband, the recurrent references to her many struggles and efforts to be understood point to the numerous motives she had to want her husband dead. Near the end of her letter, Ana concedes to having threatened her estranged husband with murder for being unfaithful to her: “le dejé creer que podría matarlo por haberme engañado” (268), and while she claims that it was said tongue-in-cheek, she tells her son that “en esas cosas de amores no hay que tomarse a broma las amenazas” (268). At one point in her defense, Ana employs the rhetorical device of enumeration, providing her reader with a list of hypothetical reasons for which she might have had her ex-husband killed: “[a]sí que se podría pensar que lo maté por venganza, por haberme engañado, por haberme utilizado, por haberme dejado como se deja lo que ya no sirve… Por venganza y por celos […]” (268). Adding to the list of possible motives, she suggests that, theoretically, she might have “incubado a lo largo de los años un odio contra tu padre que se desató en el momento en que él iba a casarse con otra mujer, iba a establecer con ella el vínculo que no había querido mantener conmigo, iba a borrarme definitivamente de su vida… Creíble, ¿verdad?” (269). Ana’s apparent full disclosure and willingness to openly share this long inventory with her reader are part of her strategy to appease her audience, as her candor is designed to lend a degree of credibility to her account, while also proving that she has nothing to hide. Ironically, despite the integrity of these theories—as she herself acknowledges when she declares to her reader, “creíble, ¿verdad?”—Ana attempts to dismantle the logic behind them, insisting that she does not fit the profile of the murderous wife, which she describes as “alguien con un carácter rencoroso, vengativo, calculador; alguien que ya hubiera dado muestras de violencia, que ya hubiera hecho daño por venganza” (269). Instead, she insinuates that it is Susana who, never having moved on after her affair with Peque’s father and after having attacked him in public, deserves more scrutiny. Not only does Ana seek to place the blame for her husband’s death elsewhere, but she also aims to hurt Peque (who, coincidentally, is romantically involved at present with Susana) in the process, thereby reinforcing for the reader her vindictive, calculating nature and, based on her own characterization stated above, her “nearly perfect” embodiment of the homicidal spouse.

Ana’s manipulative narrative persona can be discerned one last time near the end of the novel when she addresses Peque directly, and challenges him to determine, after providing him with much evidence, who is guilty in his father’s death: “Tendrás que ser tú el que decida quién es culpable de la muerte de tu padre” (273). Whereas she never explicitly confesses to her ex-husband’s murder, the deep sense of regret, sorrow, and guilt she expresses in relation to her mother’s death, the “otra muerte” (273) mentioned above, is significant, particularly regarding her development of pathos in her account. The analogy she establishes between the deaths of her mother and ex-husband is designed to underscore for her reader that she should not have to feel remorse for things over which she had or has no control and that she only laments the suffering or deaths for which she feels personally responsible. Consequently, Ana attempts to prove to her reader that, although she does feel culpable for certain past oversights and that she certainly is not without imperfections, she ultimately cannot be held liable in the death of her husband.

In Casi perfecto, the truth is highly subjective, incomplete, and as in most postmodern literature, always ambiguous and indeterminate. As conscientious, postmodern readers, we soon perceive that Ana’s narration and the self-portrait she paints for us are not entirely reliable or complete. In effect, the narrator’s ability to read reality—or herself for that matter—is equally flawed. The fact that Ana is missing an eye is significant, for it underscores her tendency to neglect or omit certain truths and prioritize her perspective over those of others. After all, her myopia—perhaps a result of her partial blindness—points to her lack of foresight and narrow perspective, as well as an inability to consider the broader implications of her argument or actions. As her text reveals, she has been not only deceived by her cheating husband, but she is flawed as well, even blaming herself for her figurative loss of vision: “durante muchos años tuve una confianza ciega en él” (220). Her corporeal incoherence and fragmentation mirror the inconsistencies and lacunae in her defense and narration, as we have seen can be the result of her faulty memory. Interestingly, like Clarín and her Galician predecessor—Pardo Bazán—who both chose the northwestern region of the peninsula as the setting for some of their respective works, Mayoral also situates many of her novels in the provincial and imaginary Galician city of Brétema, a word that, coincidentally, means “fog” (niebla) in Galician. Analogous to an opaque veil that obstructs one’s view or perception of things, the Galician fog and Ana’s partial blindness are metaphors for her inability, or unwillingness, to accept and represent the unadulterated truth. In a related vein, Ana’s daughter-in-law, Gabriela, makes a significant observation regarding her field of expertise (photography) by revealing to her mother-in-law that “la cámara recoge casi siempre lo que el ojo quiere ver, aunque a veces también recoge algo que no vemos o que no queremos ver” (211). In this instance, Gabriela correlates the image viewed and consciously chosen through the camera lens with the perspective of the individual, one that is inherently biased and often willfully blinded by one’s prejudice. Moreover, the metaphor encapsulates the very nature of Ana’s persona and account, whose aim is to present her interpretation of reality, as well as her tendency to see and portray solely what she wants to see, yet the text itself inadvertently reveals undesirable truths that are damaging to both her and the integrity of her defense. As experienced readers, we must disentangle Ana’s contradictory and partial account of events in order to come to a better understanding of the bigger picture and what may have happened to her husband.

Throughout her defense, Ana attempts to fashion for the reader a coherent and credible self through the use of rhetoric, or the appeals to logos, ethos, and pathos. She convincingly alludes to the many ways in which she, as a female writer and working mother, has endured hardships that have placed her at a real disadvantage in both her professional and personal lives. Nevertheless, in failing to avoid certain logical fallacies, Ana weakens her defense and fails, in part, to persuade the reader of her perspective. In light of the title of Mayoral’s novel, Ana’s defiant response is a partial, or almost perfect defense of her past actions. It is one that is obscured by the narrator’s fabrications, discordant narration, and unconcealed feelings of jealousy and frustration with her son, ex-husband, and the patriarchal order, thus making the truth indecipherable for both herself and her audience. By divulging other, lesser “crimes” throughout her apology, Ana avoids having to confess unequivocally to her involvement in her husband’s death. However, as is typical of discordant narration, Mayoral evidently intends for Casi perfecto to be understood differently from the way that Ana understands, or chooses to present, it to her implied reader. In the end, though, Mayoral suggests that it does not matter necessarily if Ana is guilty of the crime of which she has been accused. For one, the author seems to propose that, as a woman, any self-defense will be insufficient, regardless of the evidence provided. On the other hand, despite, or perhaps because of, the ambiguity, scandalous revelations, and discordance of her account, Ana has created just enough confusion and reasonable doubt in the reader that to contest her claims ultimately would be foolish, for, after all, it is she who has the last word and the “truth” changes depending on who is telling it. Mayoral appears to emphasize to her reading public that when women, specifically fictional female writers, are able to control the (master) narrative and impose their own version of the truth on a less (than) clever, not to mention voiceless and powerless, interlocutor, they, like their male counterparts, can enjoy a similar degree of authority and impunity for their (mis)deeds.