La Beata Laura Vicuña: The Nun's Version, Corrective of García Márquez's (original) (raw)

2007, Religion and The Arts

Th is paper identifies América Vicuña, the name given to the ill-used Lolita of García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, as a reference to Laura Vicuña (1891)(1892)(1893)(1894)(1895)(1896)(1897)(1898)(1899)(1900)(1901)(1902)(1903)(1904), a turnof-the-century Chilean teen declared venerable (the sainthood process's third-to-last step) by Pope John Paul II in the same year as Cholera's publication (1985). About the author, the allusion's identification reveals these facts: his continued animus against the Catholic Church, in particular, the pique raised in him by the Church's sexual ethics; also, the allusion points up the centrality and durability of the issue of desire's burden in the shelf of his work, as well as the likelihood that his focus on this issue diverts his otherwise remarkable vision. As regards the book, the allusion's pursuit calls into question the América Vicuña episode's most circulated interpretation, wherein América's lethal affection for her grand relative, the Old World's arch-romantic, and the old man's exploitation of that affection are thought to represent the "destruction which over the centuries has been wreaked on the (female) body of America by various predators, domestic and foreign alike" (Fiddian). To the contrary, in the allusion's light it is clear that América is neither charmed nor exploited by the Old World's courtly deceptions. Instead, her spontaneous sexual behavior bespeaks the author's effort to wreck inherited literary notions of female sexual discretion, just as the same behavior, with a saint's name pinned to it, bespeaks his intention to mock the Church's chastity ethic.