The Ladies‘ Gallery: un encaje fúnebre de voces y silencio

Abstract

This study of The Ladies‘ Gallery (1998, 1996) by Irene Vilar, places this memoir in the general context of Puerto Rican autobiography in its close relationship with nationalism and the island‘s historiography. The analysis establishes connections between Irene Vilar‘s autobiographical quest (mysticism, maternity, suicide, feminism) and that of other women writers from different literary traditions. The study also takes into account the dialogue that Impossible Motherhood. Testimony of an Abortion Addict (2009), the author‘s second memoir, establishes with the first, The Ladies‘ Gallery. It then sugests the possibility of reading death as the common thread between both works. By suggesting this, it underlines the need to read them as an inseparable baroque autobiographical entity, in which confession and silence, in constant succession, become the privileged paths toward self-knowledge.