Stories of “infected” women: Tiempos del SIDA. Relatos de la vida real (1989), by Myriam Francis (Costa Rica)

Abstract

This article studies the representations of women with HIV/AIDS, in the book Tiempos del SIDA. Relatos de la vida real, by Myriam Francis. The work begins with a reflection on the exclusion of female subjects from Latin American “seropositive” literature. It is argued that the few representations that exist focus on “suspicious women”, which is repeated, to some extent, in the selected Francis texts: “La última puerta”, “La viuda alegre” and “La chica alegre”. Then, an explanation is offered about the context in which the stories arise, a “pavilion-moridero” that is described rather as a pleasant space, that, however, emphasizes the tragicity that surrounds each “case”. Next, the three stories mentioned are studied, in which the primary symbols of evil (the stain, sin and guilt) are present, so that a woman is represented as an “innocent victim” and others, as “guilty victims” (mainly due to their “harmful lifestyles”). Finally, the work concludes that Francis’s narrative mobilizes some principles of the “theory of degeneration” to explain the situations experienced by the female characters and to offer a didactic-moralizing message.