52 pages • 1 hour read
Manuel PuigKiss of the Spider Woman
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1976A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Molina is singing when Valentin receives a letter from his current girlfriend explaining that a comrade has been killed on behalf of the cause. He relays this information, written in code, to Molina. Valentin explains that members of his political group refuse to engage in emotionally intimate relationships in case they have to sacrifice themselves. His first girlfriend, Marta, joined the cause with him but later left it, and they separated.
Still sick from the food, Valentin has a bout of diarrhea, which Molina helps clean up. As he gets weaker, Valentin starts to open up to Molina, talking about the family of the comrade who was killed and then confessing that—to his deep shame—he loves Marta in part because of her bourgeois background and demeanor. When he drifts off to sleep, this guilt bleeds into memories of the movie Molina has been recounting.
Chapter 8 Summary
Puig includes a report from the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic detailing Molina and Valentin’s time in the penitentiary. Sentenced in 1974, Molina was transferred to live with Valentin in 1975. Valentin has been detained since 1972 and at one time served in solitary confinement. On his report, it says, “conduct reprehensible, rebellious” (149).
Molina is brought to the warden, who assures Molina that her mother is feeling better and “since [Molina’s sponsor] spoke to her about the possibility of a pardon…[Molina’s mother is] practically a new person” (149). The warden asks about the poisoned food he served Valentin, and Molina says she had to eat the first meal herself to avoid suspicion. In order to be released, Molina must learn about Valentin’s comrades.
When Molina asks the warden to leave Valentin’s food alone so that he can recover, the warden insists, “I think the matter had best be left to our discretion” (151). To make sure Valentin doesn’t suspect anything when she returns to the cell, Molina asks for groceries to back up the story that her mother visited her. Molina gives the warden a detailed list of what she wants from the market.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
The letter Valentin receives lends further nuance to the theme of The Meaning and Value of Liberation. Everybody in the movement, Valentin explains, avoids romantic relationships, which might deter them from doing what must be done: “We can’t get caught up in subjective feelings for one another, because naturally either person would want the other to stay alive” (136). Valentin agrees with this, which explains why he is hesitant to build any sort of relationship with Molina or anyone else. The group members sacrifice relationships, and sometimes themselves, for the cause, making clear the high cost of the kind of liberation Valentin pursues. Valentin’s confession that he prefers Marta to his current girlfriend further suggests that in pursuing political freedom, Valentin has in some sense imprisoned himself: “I even think that, with Marta, I don’t feel attracted to her for any good reasons, but because…because she has class…that’s right, class, just like the class-conscious pigs would say” (144-45). Valentin’s revolutionary politics thus constrain his personal life, even causing him to feel ashamed of whom he is attracted to.
Valentin’s description of Marta also touches on gender roles. Valentin describes Marta as the type of girl who “never let herself be manipulated, like the typical female” (139). Valentin here indicates that the “typical” woman is gullible or easily swayed by emotional appeals—another instance of misogyny that is at odds with his politics. In retrospect, the remark is laden with dramatic irony, as Molina—a highly “feminine” person by traditional metrics—is currently manipulating the “masculine” Valentin. Moreover, she is doing so in part by leveraging female gender roles, as when she plays caretaker to Valentin throughout his illness. This weaponization of femininity is related to the theme of The Fluidity of Gender and Orientation, as it exposes gender as a performance.
The letter is important in one final way: It reveals that Valentin does have a connection to his comrades on the outside. The significance of this becomes clear when Molina’s role as an informant emerges, as this information could help Molina get pardoned. However, when Molina speaks to the warden, she doesn’t reveal anything about the letter, the girlfriend, or the friend who was killed; instead, she asks for more days, manipulating the warden for more time and asking for groceries, which she claims will help trick Valentin into thinking Molina’s mother visited that day. The question is whether Molina simply intends to gather more information before relaying it to the warden, or if she is developing an attachment to Valentin and rethinking her part in trying to entrap him.
