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.
Symbols & Motifs
Food
Content Warning: The source material and study guide contain discussion of murder, torture, political persecution, anti-LGBTQ+ bias (including anti-gay slurs), racism, addiction, suicidal ideation, and child sexual abuse.
In prison, Molina and Valentin can only get groceries when people from the outside bring them in; otherwise, they get prison food, which is described as unappetizing. As a motif, food is therefore intertwined with oppression and power—all the more so because food is used as a tool for manipulation. The warden gives Valentin food poisoning to weaken him and make him more vulnerable to Molina’s attempts to extract information. To explain Molina’s absences from the cell and thus cover up her conversations with the warden, Molina and the warden tell Valentin that Molina’s mother is bringing her groceries. The warden ensures that Molina gets the exact food she wants, and Molina also uses those groceries to gain the trust and affection of Valentin—e.g., by helping him recover from the food poisoning. Moreover, because it’s her food, Molina gets to decide what Valentin eats and when.
This last point is especially significant in light of the novel’s exploration of The Fluidity of Gender and Orientation. In making Valentin meals, Molina takes on a stereotypically domestic and nurturing female role. However, she wields considerable power in this role despite its associations with women’s subservience. This usage of the food motif also relates to the symbol of the spider woman; Valentin describes Molina as “trap[ping] men in her web” (260), implicitly likening himself to prey (female spiders are well known for eating their mates). Food thus illuminates the complicated and shifting power dynamics surrounding gender.
Relatedly, food illustrates the developing relationship between Valentin and Molina. When the guards bring them dinner, for example, Valentin sacrifices his larger portion, giving it to Molina. This shows that he has started to care for Molina. At the end of the book, Molina in his morphine-induced sleep dreams of a spread of food that contains many of the items Molina requested from the prison warden, including roast chicken and guava paste: “[L]ater with a spoon I get to eat all the guava paste I want to” (281). This fantasy underscores not only Valentin’s affection for Molina but also the effect Molina has had on him, as Valentin initially resisted indulging in any sort of sensory pleasure, viewing it as a distraction from his political work.
Movies
The movies Molina recounts to Valentin are the novel’s central motif, developing all three major themes. First and foremost, they underscore The Power of Language: Molina narrates the stories to Valentin to get him to open up so that she in turn can relay information to the warden. The content of the movies further emphasizes the relationship between words and power. One, for instance, is a piece of Nazi propaganda, and Valentin expresses interest in how it wields narrative to serve an ideological agenda: “I want to know how it turns out, just to understand the mentality of whoever made the film, the kind of propaganda they were into” (87). The zombie movie, meanwhile, depicts words as having a supernatural influence over those who hear them, compelling them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t: “[Y]ou can see in the eyes of the zombie [the first wife] that she doesn’t believe a bit of what the witch doctor’s telling her, but there’s nothing she can do, because she’s not the master of her own will, and she can’t do anything but obey the order” (211). This parallels Molina’s situation, underscoring how the warden coerces her into acting as an informant, but it also suggests language’s broader power to manipulate and control.
Because Molina uses the movies to distract herself and Valentin from their current situation, they are also key to the theme of The Meaning and Value of Liberation. In particular, the movies reveal the differences in how Valentin and Molina approach liberation. Valentin views Molina’s love of movies as pure escapism: “[Y]ou can drive yourself crazy […] from alienating yourself the way you do. Because that business of only thinking about nice things, as you put it, well, that can be dangerous too” (78). Here, Valentin suggests that Molina uses movies to avoid engaging with the real world, which for him is virtually synonymous with political action. Molina, however, defends her interest, saying, “[I]t’s just that the film was divine, and for me that’s what counts, because I’m locked up in this cell and I’m better off thinking about nice things” (78). Molina, in other words, seeks practical and immediate relief from her imprisonment through fantasizing about movies, whereas Valentin argues that any meaningful liberation must come through revolution.
Molina’s use of the movies to escape her circumstances also speaks to the theme of gender. As Molina explains, she identifies with the heroines of these movies, many of which center on romantic relationships. This allows her to imaginatively experience the happily ever after that seems out of reach to her as someone assigned male at birth but attracted to men who conform to traditional masculine gender roles, including heterosexuality (which, the novel’s framing, would also preclude attraction to a trans woman). However, this does not necessarily mean that the movies challenge traditional gender roles. In many ways, they actually reinscribe them. For example, even when the heroine of the last movie described leaves her manipulative husband, she is left with nothing and turns to sex work to support her lover, sacrificing her own wishes for the benefit of a man. Only when the ex-husband gives her jewelry does she become independent.
The Prison Cell
The novel’s setting, a prison cell, symbolizes the various kinds of oppression and captivity that the characters face. Most obviously, it represents political oppression and the state of the country. Valentin and Molina are manipulated by the warden and the guards and have little control over even the most basic day-to-day activities—e.g., when and what to eat. Even their lights are turned on and off at the guards’ will. Their lack of freedom is an extreme example of the way a repressive regime can curtail the rights of its citizens.
However, the cell also evokes less obvious forms of confinement, such as the constraints of traditional gender roles. During his illness, for example, Valentin remarks that he is “crazy […] with rage, for letting these bastards lock [him] up” (120); because he associates manhood with control, he blames himself for any loss of control, exacerbating both his imprisonment and his sickness. More broadly still, the cell represents the feeling of being trapped within oneself, which contributes to the suicidal ideation Molina expresses toward the end of the novel.
However, as Valentin and Molina become closer, the cell also becomes a symbol of liberation. Though deceit and manipulation complicate their relationship, they are nevertheless able to build their own world and establish their own “rules” in the cell. The moment when they have sex is a turning point, as it symbolically frees the characters from much of what was limiting them—Valentin from his repression of his desires, Molina from her sense of self, etc. The cell thus becomes associated with another symbol: an island separate from the rest of society. This image first appears when Valentin explains that he and Molina are free to act as they like toward one another because they are figuratively on a “desert island” together. It then reappears in Valentin’s closing dream, where it merges with a human figure: “[F]rom here I can see that the island is a woman” (279). This association of the island with a woman, whether Marta, Molina, or someone else, underscores the emotional freedom Valentin has found during his physical imprisonment.
