The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector Literary Analysis Essay Sample

In Clarice Lispector’s short novella The Hour of the Star, she utilizes the storytelling of her main character Macabea, through the affluent narrator Rodrigo, to shed light on the dichotomy between the rural Northeast versus the urban Southeast of Brazil. All the while portraying the sexism, poverty, and classism rural migrants face. 

Macabea’s entire identity is solely based on the description given to us through the patriarchal lens of our narrator, Rodrigo, who from the specific rhetoric in the text we can assume is of higher class strata than Macabea. He begins the story in what could be perceived as a condescending tone, and disdain about writing her story, stating: “I limit myself to telling of the lame adventures of a girl in a city that’s entirely against her...there are thousands of girls scattered throughout the tenement slums...They don’t even realize how easily substitutable they are”(16). His loaded rhetoric within these statements suggests that he is a part of “the city” Macabea is against, as he is of the upper-middle class of Rio. This also hints at the influx of migration of foreigners and rural citizens of Brazil at the time as he specifically describes her as being substitutable, which he stresses again later on calling her “a cog” in Brazil’s technical society (27). 

As we get more into the identity given of Macabea, we learn that she is a young, nineteen-year-old northeastern migrant who lives in impoverished, rural Brazil with her four roommates. She comes to Rio after her abusive aunt dies to be a typist but ends up in worse conditions; the only thing that defines her now is her job and her gender. In the text, she contently states: “I'm a typist and a virgin, and I like coca-cola”; contradictory though she is not at all good at her job as she has a below-average education due to the environment she grew up in (the backlands of Brazil)(32). Moreover, even with being struck with being so poor that she “before falling asleep she was hungry...the thing to do then was to chew paper into a pulp and swallow”, she is still portrayed as having a sort of innocence, or passivity about her hardships (19). Rodrigo throughout the novella expresses how he hates and loves this about her. He does not quite understand why she doesn’t rebel or fight to change her living conditions, as well as other migrants who live just like Macabea. Exclaiming: “Why doesn’t she react? Can’t she grow a backbone? No, she is sweet and obedient” (25). However, contradictory and somewhat sympathetically he acknowledges that: “Few protest and as far as I know they never complain since they don’t know to whom. Does this whom exist?...she belonged to a stubborn race of dwarves that one day might reclaim the right to scream”(64). His observation is not wrong in that Brazil was run by a military dictatorship that urban Brazil claimed as being a “Brazilian Miracle”, meanwhile the dictatorship censored the media, and harmed those who expressed sentiments against the government; migrants were not allowed to have a voice. Migrants came to work in a bustling, steadily industrializing Rio, similar to those who go to the US for the “American Dream”, however, the hardships that they encounter are not recognized. 

Furthermore, Clarice Lispector highlights the gender roles of urban Brazil specifically through the brief relationship of Macabea and her love interest Olimpico, and of course through the male gaze of Rodrigo. Throughout the short novel, there is an intended repetition of Macabea referring to herself as a virgin: “I’m a virgin! I don’t go with soldiers or sailors”(51). Sexuality and the double standard of women in 1960 Brazil skewed gender roles and played a large role in women becoming employed; there was a need for respectability. This concept created a binary between virginal (“white”) women and sexualized women of color referred to as the mulata. For example, Olimpico dumps Macabea for her coworker Gloria because of physical appearance being more useful (childbearing) rather than Macabea: “when he saw Glória, Macabéa’s coworker, he immediately realized she had class... good Portuguese wine in her blood and also a way of swinging her hips when she walked thanks to some hidden African blood... that made her quality goods”(49). Similarly, our narrator Rodrigo constantly refers to her as a weak and unattractive and makes it known that “her sex was the only vehement sign of her existence”(57). Reinforcing the fact that modern urban Brazil was still not modern in the aspect of feminism, and society only viewed them as useful for their bodies. 

In conclusion, Lispector provides us with a short but complex novella that presents questions about the haves and have nots of modern urban Brazil.  The literary usage of the sophisticated Rodrigo commenting and telling the story of poor Macabea gives insight to how the people of affluent urban Rio viewed migrants and just how out of place she was as she found it hard to adapt and found it very lonely. Overall, Macabéa's origin story and identity struggles allowed us to truly see the regional differences of the rural Northeast versus the urban Southeast of Brazil.