Nearly two decades since Death and the Maiden was published, it is still fresh and current. The story begins with Paulina Calas sitting on the terrace. She is married to a human rights lawyer, Gerardo Escobar, who has been appointed to the country’s commission to investigate the former regime’s human rights abuses in an unnamed country.
Paulina then imprisons her husband’s house guest, the seemingly benign and even kind Dr. Roberto Miranda because she believes he tortured and raped her when she was a political prisoner. The book consists mainly of an ongoing conversation between the trio.
Paulina’s nightmare began on April 6, 1975. Three got out of a car and one pointed a gun to her ear and said: “One word and we’ll blow it up, miss.” She was then taken to prison, tortured, and repeatedly raped. One of her torturers was a doctor. Although she couldn’t see him because she was blindfolded, she never forgot her voice. When she overhears Dr. Miranda speak at her house, she is certain that he was her jailer.
It seems that at first the torturers hired the doctor to alleviate the suffering of the prisoners. But over time, the brutality he witnessed turned him into a monster. He became less interested in the welfare of his patients, and his pain became a drug that turned him on.
He was more concerned with how much a tortured human being can take before dying. He was interested in learning how torture, including the use of electric current, affects a woman’s sexuality.
When Paulina Salas was arrested it was already too late and the virtue of the doctor had been supplanted by sadism. She had become the embodiment of evil and willingly participated in the mass rapes of female prisoners.
Death and The Maiden is an obvious reference to various regimes in South America. Dorfman’s native Chile was ruled by General Pinochet for nearly two decades until he stepped down in 1991. His government was a monument to brutal intolerance and the persecution of dissidents. Yet the unmistakable parallels with regimes on our own continent cannot be overlooked either.
It seems impossible to separate the author from the character of Gerardo, the humanist lawyer for human rights. The role of the character seems to have a submerged affinity with the author’s message. The author also forces us to wonder what made Dr. Miranda turn into a monster. He is an educated and even refined man with a deep love for music. However, when lawlessness ensued, his wilder instincts and the evil side of his nature asserted themselves.
Perhaps Ariel Dorfman is a defender of the rule of law that applies to even the best among us. Because when there are no restrictions and everything is allowed, even the most virtuous are capable of total degradation.
The book also skilfully shows the human forces that are unleashed when the victims finally face their tormentors. It shows how this confrontation can sometimes lead to healing. I found the political message in the book to be only a marginal dividend. Dorfman is a natural reconciler and the last paragraph of the story is a demonstration of that.
And why does it always have to be people like me who have to sacrifice, why do we always have to make concessions when something has to be conceded, why do I always have to bite my tongue, why?
In Paulina, despite her anger, there seems to be a grudging acceptance of the need for forgiveness. It is both a human and a pragmatic need.
What do we lose by killing one of them? What do we lose? What do we lose?
With these last words, Paulina finally breaks free from her grave of anger, and seems to be asking herself: What do we gain by killing one of them? What we win? What we win? With this, she reveals the greatness of her soul and the depth of her mind. It’s like she realizes that sometimes the battle between good and evil can end in a truce.
Paulina is the central character of the story. It is her portrayal that shines, and the other characters are only marginal. She is aware of the importance of her decisions. It’s her ordeal, her rage, and it’s her last response that frees the others to get on with their lives.
Death and the Maiden, though sad, is a thoughtful, deeply subtle, and wonderfully entertaining read. It exposes the terrifying and extremely disturbing face of a dictatorship and raises the moral questions of justice, retribution and forgiveness.