SOURCE: “Ices Everlasting and Passions Perverted: The Physical and Moral Climates of Puig's Anti-utopia,” in Climate and Literature: Reflections of Environment, edited by Janet Pérez and Wendell Aycock, Texas Tech University Press, 1995, pp. 99-106.

In the following essay, Cheever asserts that “the bleak and frigid physical landscape” of Part III of Puig's Pubis Angelical “is an appropriate metaphor for the moral atmosphere of the ‘polar age’ of human sexuality.”

But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. 

Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”

Manuel Puig's Pubis Angelical is a rich and complex work which examines the history, current status, and possible future direction of male/female relationships, with particular focus upon masculine domination and exploitation of women. Like the speaker in Yeats' “Sailing to Byzantium” wishes to do, the voices...