The Galvanized Victim Reciprocates Abuse to the Electro-perpetrator
Death and the Maiden is a play written by Ariel Dorfman after seven years of exile from Chile when General Augusto Pinochet was still the dictator of the nation. In this play, Dorfman explores the unstable psyche of citizens of Chile who had undergone horrific abuse by the Pinochet’s regime. Dorfman uses his protagonist, Paulina, as an emblem that embodies the citizens of Chile who have been victimized by fascism. In the play, Paulina is raped and abused under the high-voltage, electric currents by the secret servicemen of the Pinochet’s regime. Paulina’s physical and psychological wounds from this abuse symbolically represent the scars of Chileans who had been victimized by fascism. Electricity that is used by the secret serviceman is also an emblem that signifies the annihilative power of fascism. Dorfman’s use of electricity as a metaphor warns that if the power of government is not monitored with moral conscience, it can bring devastating, irreparable outcomes, not only to its oppressed citizens, but also to the regime itself. In Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, Dr. Roberto is the secret serviceman of fascism who rapes and galvanizes Paulina, a woman who represents the victimized citizens of Chile. Due to Roberto’s abusive use of high-voltage electricity, Paulina, ironically, transmogrifies into a perpetrator who “reciprocates” the same level of abuse back to Roberto, resulting in a reversal of role and power between the two parties, symbolically dismantling fascism.
In order to understand how the power of electricity signifies fascism in Dorfman’s play, first, it is helpful to examine the nature and the power of electricity. Electricity has both regenerative and annihilative powers. Its regenerative power is seen in all living organisms, from the photosynthesis of plants to the radiation therapy of humans (that uses X-rays or ultraviolet light to heal and lengthen human life). In Dorfman’s play, however, the regenerative power of electricity signifies the freedom and democracy that would enhance the lives of Chileans. Electricity’s annihilative power is just as actively sought after by humans; for example, radiation injury (ionizing radiation) that causes sickness to nuclear energy (radioactive energy from fission) that causes widespread destruction of life and the environment. Metaphorically, electricity’s annihilative power in Dorfman’s play alludes to fascism that kills individualism and free society. Electricity, therefore, can either electrocute (kill) or electrify (revive); for this reason, its power must be governed with ethical prudence.
Because electricity has power to kill, the danger of mishandling its power escalates in the hands of the brutal perpetrator like Roberto, who is morbidly curious and devoid of ethics. Roberto, in Death and the Maiden, confesses his perverse curiosity in electrically-induced, human anatomy: “My curiosity was partly morbid, partly scientific. How much can this woman take?…Does her sex dry up when you put the current through her? Can she have an orgasm under those circumstances?” (59). Under Fascism, the victims who fall under such inhumane Doctor, at best, are severely abused, and at worst, face possible death: “She is entirely in your power, you can carry out all your fantasies, you can do what you want with her” (59). Thus, the brutality of Dr. Roberto reveals how electricity (the power of fascism) in the hands of the few powerful can injure its laboratory victims (its citizens). By emblematizing electricity as a metaphor, Dorfman indirectly and artfully demonstrates the perverse and brutal power of fascism under Pinochet.
Surely, the rape and the electro-abuse that Roberto commit against Paulina are bizarre and inhumane, potentially producing psychological electrogenetic symptoms in her. For instance, Paulina avoids light, so much so that her husband, Geraldo, constantly adds more light into their inhabitant. In the dark of the night, Geraldo comes home to his wife, Paulina, and finds her “hidden behind the curtains. He switches on a light” (3). Geraldo, again, adds more light to find his dinner: “He puts on another lamp and sees the table set” (4). Furthermore, the scene in which Roberto visits Geraldo reveals that Paulina instinctively pushes Roberto away from her presence by turning off the light: “Someone knocks…A lamp is switched on…[but] is immediately switched off” (12). Paulina’s aberrant behavior towards “light” seems to suggest that these symptoms link to the high voltage, electro-shocks she suffered. Symbolically, it is a post-fascist, psychological symptoms marked in the citizens ofChile. Her symptoms allude to the mistrusting and fearful mentality of Chileans in the aftermath of Pinochet’s regime. The citizens rather find refuge in the dark, for they fear that the electric lights, which represent the power of fascism, might rape them once more, pulverizing their individual dignity.
In addition to Paulina’s deliberate avoidance of lights, she also exhibits behaviors that seem to evince that she has been desensitized to violence by the electric stimuli. First, the biological impact of electric stimuli on Paulina’s body can be examined to analogically link her symptoms to that of the citizens of Chile. According to Siniaia, a neurologist, “in mammalian,…central nervous systems exhibit habituation and/or sensitization of their responses to repetitive stimuli” (Siniaia, 1). In other words, “electric stimulation of infralimbic subregion (lower area of cerebrum) reduces conditioned…fear stimuli” (Milad 1). These scientific studies cast light on why, perhaps, Paulina in the play exhibits no fear. Also this impact of electric stimulations on mammalian is analogous to the fascist regime that not only repeatedly manipulates and controls the minds of its citizens, but also desensitizes the citizens to violence. Paulina, who had undergone near-death experience with electric shocks, shows no fear of abusing or killing her perpetrator, Roberto: “When I heard his voice, I thought the only thing I want is to have him raped” (40). She continues: “What do we lose by killing one of them?” (66) Roberto’s electro-abuse against Paulina that symbolizes fascist brutality, in effect, has desensitized and galvanized her into a perpetrator. Thus, the electrically desensitized Paulina symbolizes Chileans who are apathetic to the violence and death after many years of repetitive, brutal stimulations from the Pinochet’s regime.
Just as the studies on electric stimulations give insights into that Paulina could have been desensitized to violence, examining other characteristics of electricity provide cues to the victim’s reciprocal behaviors. Scientifically, Paulina’s act of reciprocating abuse back to Roberto can be analyzed, hypothetically, that the victim’s “impedance” (Giaever 2) is at action, an electro-phenomenon that is defined as an overall opposition to electric currents. In other words, human bodies, innately, either neutralize or resist electric stimuli off their bodies. This tendency of human bodies can be analogically adapted to assume that oppressed Chileans will naturally find ways to either neutralize or fight fascism off their state. Furthermore, electricity is not static; it is intrinsically mobile, an electro-phenomenon termed as “electromotion.” Electricity – either negatively/positively charged – naturally travels from one place/thing to another, transmitting its energy on to that which it comes in contact with. In order to apply this intrinsic nature of electricity to human phenomena, this mobility of electricity can be figuratively adapted as “violence begets violence.” In other words, electricity’s inherent mobility can be reinterpreted metaphorically to explicate why Roberto’s electro-abuse would affect Paulina, and her galvanized energy, in turn, would haunt him. Thus, from electromotive phenomena, a simile can be drawn to hypothesize human phenomena: that one person’s negative/positive motives engender another’s negative/positive motives accordingly. Whether the interpretation is scientific or metaphoric, one, coterminous analysis can be derived from this electromotive hypothesis: humans, in general, are innately born with reciprocal impulses to, at least, oppose or resist negative energy, if not to reciprocate exactly, as ill for ill and good for good. Thus, symbolically, the violence suffered by the Chileans under Pinochet’s fascism has natural tendencies to be reciprocated by the victims unto the perpetrators.
This metaphoric interpretation of electromotion – the galvanic mobility plus its tendency to reciprocate – can be divided into two major, insurgent movements to analyze Paulina’s act of revenge. The first movement is Paulina’s character metamorphosis, her character transformation into that of her perpetrator, Roberto. This character transformation prepares and enables her to reciprocate abuse. The second movement of insurgence is the consummation of revenge, the actual act of reciprocating abuse for abuse and violence for violence, ultimately undermining the authority of Roberto.
The first movement of insurgence – the victim’s character metamorphosis – primarily comes through “character mimesis,” meaning that Paulina transforms into a perpetrator through mimicry, ultimately mirroring Roberto’s demeanor and gender. For instance, Paulina mimics male’s voice and demeanor: “She…discovers Roberto about to free himself…Paulina ties him up again, while her voice assumes male tones” (37). She, in effect, is transforming herself into an assertive and preemptive fascist. She no longer wants to be the submissive citizen anymore. In fact, she regrets that in “All [her] life, [she’s] always been much too obedient” (58). Paulina is no longer reactive, nor heeds to fascist authority. The following passage shows that she is now a different citizen; she appropriates fascist authority: “I don’t need to ask him…I gave him the name Bud, Doctor…I inserted in my story to Gerardo, and you corrected most of them. It turned out just as I planned…I’m going to kill you because you’re guilty” (64-5). Paulina’s character transformation represents Chileans who are preparing to take actions into their own hands, transmogrifying into the very same demeanor of their fascist perpetrators.
The final movement of insurgence – the consummation of revenge – reaches its climax as Paulina not only gains full control of her perpetrator, but also dismantles his power and authority that which represents fascism. Paulina triumphs when Roberto, after many hours of psychological and physical abuse, begs her for a pardon. “Forgiveness” (60), Roberto cries out, and “writes down” (61) his confession while Paulina “hear [his vocal] confession on the tape” (61). Roberto even “gets down on his knees” (65); his once-powerful, fascist authority totally dismantles. The only thing that stops Paulina from actually killing Roberto is that her abuse from him, however brutal, does not add up to a murder: “Kill them? Kill him? As he didn’t kill me, I think it wouldn’t be fair to –” (34). Paulina knows that because Roberto represents only an administrator of fascism, killing him would not kill the entire system. In fact, what she really wants is for him to confess, repent and reform. In other words, what the people of Chile want from their previous regime is that it admits its brutality and compensates for it. In this last scene of the play, since Roberto has confessed and repented, Paulina and the people of Chile is satisfied and show that their insurgence have successfully culminated to the full cycle of reciprocity.
Paulina’s successful act of dismantling the authority and power of Roberto attests to the reversal of power between the two parties. The fact that Dorfman has chosen a woman as a victim, and not a man, dramatizes the uneven power relations between Pinochet’s regime and Chileans. Moreover, by emblematizing an element that is as prodigious, yet destructive, as electricity, Dorfman poignantly stresses the brutality of Pinochet’s fascism. However, the fact that his protagonist, Paulina, does not kill Roberto at the end of the play shows that the author advocates peace between the perpetrators and the victims who have survived Pinochet’s fascism. Thus, the prime purpose of Dorfman’s play, The Death and The Maiden, is not to provoke anger, but to provide a purging effect in the Chilean audience. In other words, the fact that Paulina – who represents the victims of Chile – wields her power to successfully flip the power relations with that of Roberto allows the Chilean audience to vicariously channel out their decades-old, fascist toxics, and thus become relieved and free.
Works Cited
Dorfman, Ariel. Death and the Maiden.New York: Penguin, 1991.
Giaever, Ivar, et al., eds. “Electrical Wound-Healing Assay for Cells in Vitro.” PNAS 101.6 (2004): 1554-1559.
Milad, M.R. et al., eds. “Electrical Stimulation of Medial Prefrontal Cortex Reduces Conditioned Fear in a Temporally Specific Manner.” Behavioral Neuroscience 118.2 (2004): 389-394.
Siniaia M.S., et al., eds. “Habituation and desensitization of the Hering-Breuer Reflex in Rat.” The Journal of Physiology: 523.2 (2000): 479-91.
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