SOURCE: “Desire and Discourse in María Luisa Bombal's New Islands,” in Hispanofila, Vol. 112, No. 1, September, 1994, pp. 51-63.

In the following psychoanalytical study of Bombal's New Islands and Other Stories, Díaz addresses the theme of desire.

What does woman want? ask the psychoanalysts. Sigmund Freud posits what seems to be a logical answer as he develops his penis envy theory. Carl Jung's spiritual rapprochement to sexuality places woman's desire in the context of opposite and complementary male and female psychic tendencies or archetypes, as seen in the Yin and Yang of Taoist philosophy.¹ Jacques Lacan re-reads Freud in the light of Saussure and Derrida and offers alternative possibilities to the issue of woman's desire. For Lacan the penis becomes the phallus and the phallus in turn represents the signifier of desire, the power of authority and the structure of language.² The perspective of the writer offers new...