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Authority, Society, and the Public
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Death and the Maiden, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Paulina is a strong, intelligent woman who has suffered the double injustice of being raped and knowing that her attacker has in all likelihood escaped any possibility of punishment. And though her husband, Gerardo, appears to be supportive of her, his actions frequently suggest otherwise. The sudden appearance of Roberto, the man who she feels certain is her attacker, gives her an impromptu opportunity to empower herself by taking the issue into her own hands. Whether or not she is right do so, or successful, is another question, and one which ultimately the audience must answer. What is undoubtedly true, though, is that Dorfman shows his audience a temporary reversal of the power structure that facilitated Paulina’s attacker—for the duration of the play at least, Paulina has control. This implicitly highlights the gendered dynamics that structure Paulina’s world, in which men are presumed authorities and women denied full autonomy and respect.
It’s important to understand the way in which Paulina lives in a male-dominated world rife with misogynistic attitudes. Both Gerardo and Roberto speak about Paulina in demeaning terms. Gerardo frequently barks orders at her and Roberto at one point appeals to Gerardo, “man-to-man,” to save him: "She isn't the voice of civilization, you are." Paulina also recounts frequent sexually explicit references made about her by her torturers. Roberto often refers to Paulina as a “bitch,” and both men characterise her as “mad” or “insane,” denying her the right to seek justice. Gerardo, for his part, had an affair with another woman while Paulina was being tortured by the dictatorship. All of these details, then, accumulate over the course of the play to paint Paulina as an isolated woman in a world dominated by men, making her actions all the more understandable. Gerardo and Roberto’s attitude implies that Paulina’s suffering is, in part, her own fault—simply for being a woman.
Paulina’s specific experiences under the military regime demonstrate the devaluation of women taken to its horrific endpoint: Paulina’s rape was the ultimate violation of her identity as a woman. She was disenfranchised of her power and treated as a discardable sexual object by her male abusers. The character of her torture was directly linked to her inferior status as a woman, with her torturers frequently referring to her as a “bitch” and “fresh meat,” asking themselves macabre quasi-scientific questions on the effects of their torture on her “sex.”
Importantly, part of the reason Paulina was tortured was that her attackers wanted to know the identity of an anti-dictatorship activist that she knew—who, it turns out, was Gerardo. Despite her extreme suffering, Paulina never gave up Gerardo’s name, showing her in a small but vital way to be more powerful than her torturers. Accordingly, as the audience gradually learns more about what happened to Paulina, she stakes the claim to be the strongest of the three characters. She has been through far more than either of them and does not display the meekness of Gerardo or the likely immorality of Roberto. This suggests that power is not just about its physical manifestation; Dorfman seems to say that people can have power in different ways, and that Paulina’s resistance through mental toughness is a bold example of strength.
As part of her efforts to take control over her situation, Paulina uses characteristically male techniques of intimidation to try to address the injustices she has faced. But by having Paulina use these methods, Dorfman shines fresh light on how violent they are and, more importantly, reminds the audience that when these methods are employed it is usually by men. Paulina knows she doesn’t have the physical strength to overpower Roberto or, indeed, Gerardo, who does not approve of her plan to interrogate Roberto. Accordingly, she decides to retrieve a gun from a drawer and uses that to exert her dominance over the other two characters. The gun—a phallic symbol—allows Paulina to reverse the usual power dynamic and dictate the course of events. But it also mimics the tactics under which she was kidnapped and by which many people were made to suffer under the dictatorship. She further mimics her torturer by putting on a man’s voice and speaking to Roberto in derogatory terms.
Her treatment of Roberto generally echoes the way that she herself was treated (minus the actual torture and rape). He is held captive against his will, as she was. In a particularly important moment, Paulina gags Roberto by taking off her underwear and stuffing it into his mouth. This is a clear gesture of female empowerment, in which Paulina uses an item loaded with sexual suggestion as a way of enforcing her dominance over her captive. It is clear, then, that Paulina’s uses behaviour usually disassociated from her as a woman to take control of her situation.
However, that does not necessarily mean that the play advocates her decision to do so. The overall point that Dorfman seems to make is that there is no other real strategy available to her—either she has to take back control by mirroring the techniques of her male abusers, or she has to resign herself to never finding justice. The play, then, suggests not that her actions are “right” but that they are, given the circumstances of her life, entirely understandable.
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Female Empowerment ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Female Empowerment appears in each act of Death and the Maiden. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Female Empowerment Quotes in Death and the Maiden
Below you will find the important quotes in Death and the Maiden related to the theme of Female Empowerment.
Act 1, Scene 1 Quotes
GERARDO: If I were to accept, I must know I can count on you, that you don’t feel . . . if you were to have a relapse, it could leave me . . .
PAULINA: Vulnerable, yes, it could leave you vulnerable. Stripped. You’d have to take care of me all over again.
GERARDO: That’s unfair.
Brief pause.
Are you criticizing me because I take care of you?
PAULINA: And that’s what you told the president, that your wife might have problems with . . .
Pause.
GERARDO: He doesn’t know. Nobody knows. Not even your mother knows.
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This is a quote from a discussion between Gerardo and Paulina about whether Gerardo should accept the president’s offer to head up a new commission that will investigate human rights abuses under the previous military dictatorship. It’s significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, Gerardo shows obvious discomfort in talking about what happened to Paulina under the dictatorship (she was raped and tortured). This recurs throughout the play, showing a weakness on Gerardo’s part in facing up to the horrors of what happened to his wife. He is conflicted: part of him is thinking about his career, another about the Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Ac
Act 1, Scene 2 Quotes
ROBERTO: No, I am telling you, and this is said straight from the heart, this Commission is going to help us close an exceptionally painful chapter in our history, and here I am, alone this weekend, we’ve all got to help out—it may be a teensy-weensy gesture but—
GERARDO: Tomorrow would have been fine.
ROBERTO: Tomorrow? You manage to get to your car—no spare. Then you have to set out and find me. No, my friend,— and then I thought I might as well offer to go fix it with you tomorrow with my jack—which reminds me— what happened to your jack, did you find out what—
GERARDO: My wife loaned it to her mother.
ROBERTO: To her mother?
GERARDO: You know women. . . .
ROBERTO (laughing): All too well. The last mystery. We are going to explore all the frontiers, my friend, and we will still have that unpredictable female soul. You know what Nietzsche once wrote—at least I think it was Nietzsche? That we can never entirely possess that female soul. Or maybe it wasn’t him. Though you can be sure that old Nietzsche would have if he’d found himself on a weekend road without a jack.
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This quote comes as Roberto stands at Gerardo and Paulina’s door. Roberto is very keen to ingratiate himself with Gerardo and to appear approving of Gerardo’s new commission. But the most important aspect of this quote is the way it reflects something that the two men have in common: casual misogyny. They bond over a shared belief of women as stupid; this isn’t explicitly stated but is implied by Gerardo’s comment about “knowing women.” Roberto’s reply is especially significant. Firstly, it betrays an attitude that believes women are fundamentally different from men, that they are somehow unknowable and mysterious. His Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostru
Act 1, Scene 3 Quotes
We see her dragging something in, which resembles a body but we can’t be sure. As the scene continues, it can be seen that it is a body. She moves a chair and hoists the body onto it, ties it to the chair. She goes into the spare room, returns with what seems to be Roberto’s jacket, takes a set of car keys
from it. She starts to leave the house. Stops. Turns back to look at the body which is now clearly that of Roberto. She takes off her panties, stuffs it into Roberto’s mouth.
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These are stage directions in a short scene that takes place after Gerardo has insisted that Roberto stay the night. They show Paulina taking violent control of her situation. She has just knocked Roberto unconscious and now ties him up, hostage-style, to a chair. Her choice of action mirrors the violence of extra-judicial vengeance and is comparable to her own abduction. She acts this way because she does not believe that Gerardo’s commission will offer her any semblance of justice; furthermore, she is certain that Roberto is the doctor who raped and tortured her. Using her own underwear as a Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occa
Act 1, Scene 4 Quotes
PAULINA: But here I am chatting away when I’m supposed to make breakfast, aren’t I, a nice breakfast? Now you like—let’s see, ham sandwiches, wasn’t it? Ham sandwiches with mayonnaise. We haven’t got mayonnaise, but we do have ham. Gerardo also likes ham. I’ll get to know your other tastes. Sorry about the mayonnaise. I hope you don’t mind that this must remain, for the moment, a monologue. You’ll have your say, Doctor, you can be sure of that. I just don’t want to remove this— gag, you call it, don’t you?—at least not till Gerardo wakes up.
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At the beginning of this scene, Roberto regains consciousness to find himself tied up and gagged. Paulina is in mid-flow, talking about her life, suggesting that holding Roberto hostage is offering her, if not catharsis, an opportunity to speak about things she normally holds deep within. Her discussion about sandwiches is a play on the idea of women as domestic servants whose role is to provide for the superior men. There is a sense that she is enjoying her newfound, fleeting power, drawing satisfaction that she has reversed the situation that caused her such trauma. Her mention of a “nice Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam el
PAULINA: D’you know how long it’s been since I last listened to this quartet? If it’s on the radio, I turn it off, I even try not to go out much, though Gerardo has all these social events he’s got to attend and if they ever name him minister we’re going to live running around shaking hands and smiling at perfect strangers, but I always pray they won’t put on Schubert. One night we were dining with— they were extremely important people, and our hostess happened to put Schubert on, a piano sonata, and I thought, do I switch it off or do I leave, but my body decided for me, I felt extremely ill right then and there and Gerardo had to take me home, so we left them there listening to Schubert and nobody knew what had made me ill, so I pray they won’t play that anywhere I go, any Schubert at all, strange isn’t it, when he used to be, and I would say, yes I really would say, he’s still my favorite composer, such a sad, noble sense of life. But I always promised myself a time would come to recover him, bring him back from the grave so to speak, and just sitting here listening to him with you I know that I was right, that I’m—so many things that are going to change from now on, right? To think I was on the verge of throwing my whole Schubert collection out, crazy!
(raising her voice, to Gerardo)
Isn’t this quartet marvellous, my love?
[…]
The real real truth is that you look slightly bored.
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This quote comes just before Gerardo wakes up to find Roberto tied up in the living and Paulina holding the gun. It represents the first mention of Schubert in the play—apart from the title itself—and gives a sense of the strange ways that trauma can affect an individual. Though the audience doesn’t yet have full details of what happened to Paulina, she is talking about the way her rapist would play this particular Schubert quartet during his attacks. This clearly had a profound impact on her that created a devastating link between the memory, the trauma, and her senses. Since Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aper
GERARDO: Paulina, I’m asking you to please give me that gun.
PAULINA: No.
GERARDO: While you point it at me, there is no possible dialogue.
PAULINA: On the contrary, as soon as I stop pointing it at you, all dialogue will automatically terminate. If I put it down you’ll use your strength to win the argument.
[…]
GERARDO: You can’t do this.
PAULINA: When are you going to stop telling me what I can and can’t do. “You can’t do this, you can do that, you can’t do this.” I did it.
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Paulina’s decision to put Roberto on trial is entirely dependent on the unlikely opportunity of him ending up at her house by chance. Here, Gerado pleads with her to put down the gun; but she recognizes that it is the sole source of the power that gives her control over the situation. Contrary to Gerardo’s assertion, the violent threat paradoxically enables her ability to confront both her attack and her (alleged) attacker. She knows that Gerardo will overpower her if she puts the gun down and therefore refuses his pleas. More generally, it gives her a chance to make him Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut
Act 2, Scene 1 Quotes
PAULINA: You don’t know anything about Gerardo, do you?—I mean you never knew a thing. I never breathed his name. Your—your colleagues, they’d ask me, of course. “With that twat, little lady, don’t tell you haven’t got someone to fuck you, huh? Come on, just tell us who’s been fucking you, little lady.” But I never gave them Gerardo’s name. Strange how things turn out. If I had mentioned Gerardo, he wouldn’t have been named to any Investigating Commission, but would have been one of the names that some other lawyer was investigating. And I would be in front of that Commission to tell them how I met Gerardo—in fact I met him just after the military coup, helping people seek asylum in embassies—saving lives with Gerardo, smuggling people out of the country so they wouldn’t be killed. I was wild and fearless, willing to do anything, I can’t believe that I didn’t have an ounce of fear in my whole body at that time.
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In this quote Paulina continues her monologue, speaking to the restrained Roberto. Here, Dorfman contrasts two very different types of power: physical and mental. Paulina couldn’t do anything physical to stop her torture and rape, but she had the strength of mind to resist her abusers attempts to make her give up useful information. In a sense, then, this represents a victory for her and contributes to an overall impression in the play that she is the strongest of the three characters. This also provides more backstory to Paulina and Gerardo, telling the reader that Gerardo was once brave too. Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. A
ROBERTO: (coughs, then in a rough, hoarse voice): Water.
GERARDO: What?
PAULINA: He wants water, Gerardo.
Gerardo rushes to fill a glass with water and brings it to Roberto, giving it to him to drink. Roberto drinks it down noisily.
PAULINA: Nothing like good fresh water, eh, Doctor? Beats drinking your own piss.
ROBERTO: Escobar. This is inexcusable. I will never forgive you as long as I live.
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In this excerpt, Roberto’s gag is removed for the first time since Paulina tied him up. Her comment about “piss” strongly implies that this was something she was made to do during her imprisonment, adding further detail to the suffering she had to undergo. Roberto is momentarily reduced to his basic human needs and stripped of his cultured manner. The most important aspect of this quote is to notice Roberto’s instinctual behavior on being given back his capacity to speak. Though Paulina is clearly his captor, his first thought is to try and reason with Gerardo—the man, not the woman. Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur
PAULINA:I would imagine pushing their head into a bucket of their own shit, or electricity, or when we would be making love and I could feel the possibility of an orgasm building, the very idea of currents going through my body would remind me and then—and then I had to fake it, fake it so you wouldn’t know what I was thinking, so you wouldn’t feel that it was your failure—oh Gerardo.
GERARDO: Oh, my love, my love.
PAULINA: So when I heard his voice, I thought the only thing 1want is to have him raped, have someone fuck him, that’s what I thought, that he should know just once what it is to . . . And as I can’t rape—I thought that it was a sentence that you would have to carry out.
GERARDO: Don’t go on, Paulina.
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Here Paulina gives Gerardo an unflinching account of how her trauma has affected her. She admits to wanting to inflict the same suffering on her attackers that they did on her, with particular focus on the specific sensations caused by her torture and rape. Her wish for closure manifests as a desire to make her enemies experience her exact pain. The quote also demonstrates the way that rape as a sexual act has denied her the ability to enjoy consensual sex, providing further evidence of the many ways that such a catastrophic experience can continue to make an individual suffer. Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperia
Act 2, Scene 2 Quotes
GERARDO: Roberto, I want to be honest with you. There is only one way to save your life . . .
Brief pause.
I think we have to—indulge her.
ROBERTO: Indulge her?
GERARDO: Humor her, placate her, so she feels that we—that you, are willing to cooperate . . .
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This takes place while Gerardo is spoon-feeding soup to Roberto as Paulina watches on from the terrace. It shows that, despite Paulina’s conviction that Roberto is her rapist, and the reasoning for this that she has given to Gerardo, Gerardo still goes with his instinctual belief that Roberto is innocent. In fact, they have a certain kind of male camaraderie going on. Gerardo’s attitude towards Paulina is inherently dismissive and is at odds with his earlier expressions of sympathy towards her. Finally, it’s telling that he uses the word “indulge,” implying that to give her a sense of justice would Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia.
ROBERTO: Playing roles, she’s bad, you’re good, to see if you can get me to confess that way. And once I’ve confessed, you’re the one, not her, you’re the one who’s going to kill me, it’s what any man would do, any real man, if they’d raped his wife, it’s what I would do if somebody had raped my wife. Cut your balls off. So tell me: you think I’m that fucking doctor, don’t you?
Pause. Gerardo stands up.
Where are you going?
GERARDO: I’m going to get the gun and blow your fucking brains out. (Brief pause. Angrier and angrier) But first you sonuvabitch I’m going to follow your advice and cut off your balls, you fascist. That’s what a real man does, doesn’t he. Real macho men blow people’s brains out and fuck women when they’re tied up on cots. Not like me. I’m a stupid, yellow, soft faggot because I defend the son of a bitch who screwed my wife and destroyed her life. How many times did you screw her? How many times, you bastard?
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This quote comes just after Gerardo’s suggestion that he and Roberto should “collaborate” on falsifying Roberto’s confession in order to secure his release (and, presumably, to help Gerardo keep his new post on the commission). Roberto hits Gerardo where it hurts, attacking his sense of masculinity and suggesting that Paulina is dominant over him. This then brings about the one true display of anger in Gerardo—notably absent in his discussions with Paulina—and leads him to momentarily desire killing Gerardo. It’s not convincing, however, and is quickly deflated when Roberto insists that he was only “joking.” The quote speaks to a Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad do
Act 3, Scene 1 Quotes
GERARDO: People can die from an excessive dose of the truth, you know.
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This quote comes as Paulina probes Gerardo on the affair that he had whilst she was being raped and tortured. Just as she wants what happened to her to be out in the open, with the view to hopefully assisting her desire for justice, so too does she want to put Gerardo’s wrongdoings out in the open in order to make him take responsibility for his actions. Gerardo’s response suggests that too much truth is damaging, a notion that is fundamentally at odds with the express purpose of his commission—to expose the brutal truth of what happened under the military Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Providen
