UNCANNY SPACES AND IDENTITIES UNDER CONSTRUCTION: A READING OF THE SHORT STORY “LA CASA DE AZÚCAR”, BY SILVINA OCAMPO

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the representation of space in the tale “La casa de azúcar” (1959), according to Freud’s Uncanny (1919), and the domestic perspective present throughout the narrative. The unsettling feeling of something strangely familiar promoted by the house itself becomes an experience that evokes an ambivalent sense, that awakes an occult horror at the same time that remits to something very familiar. In this sense, the domestic perspective given by Silvana Ocampo to the haunted house tradition brings a new way to imagine the house in the South-American literary tradition. While the house and the protagonist suffers unusual transformations, it is assumed that a profound interaction between the house and its residents may exist (the metamorphosis between the characters being a form of problematization of the feminine gender). The effect of doubt is sustained throughout the tale by a narrator who tells a questionable story; the reader is unable to assume if what happened was a delirium of the narrator, or if the house and the characters have been bewitched.