Marginality and dissent in Laura Restrepo's La novia oscura [1999]

Abstract

The objective of this essay is to analyze La Novia Oscura by Colombian writer Laura Restrepo. We hypothesize that Tora, the city where the novel is set, is a hamlet located in the Colombian Magdalena Medio region —that is, a peripheral region, distant from the center of constitutional power— that functions as a prism through which we can view the country's political and economic contradictions. Likewise, it is a place of "sanctuary" for some social groups who live outside the law. However, Tora is also a contested space in which a group of marginalized women, even by gynocentric or feminist discourses, attempt to recover their dignity in a society that has stigmatized them for their profession as prostitutes. Corresponding to the above, at the beginning of the novel the official discourses on power, body control, hygiene, disease and prostitution are deconstructed or questioned. However, towards the end of the story, the judicialization and moralization of women's bodies triumphs once again.

Keywords: prostitution, dissidence, insilio, hygienist discourse, control of the body.