Manipulated From The Beginning

The epigraph that introduces Aura made me think of both Foe and feminism, and also started off my readings with a few assumptions that turned out to be a little skewed. "Mother of fantasy…wings that enable her to fly to the infinite of desire and the imagination" made me think of mother-born, which I guess made me think this would be a story about a strong woman, one who knows how to write her own story and is aware of her power, unlike Susan Barton in Foe. The quote talks about how "man hunts and struggles" while "woman intrigues and dreams" and so from that I inferred that the story might focus on female power rather than male, and present a nice feminist perspective. I was so wrong, and that's why it's dangerous to make assumptions before you even start reading.

But then what is the purpose of an epigraph? The author doesn't have to pick one, nor does he just randomly throw in an unrelated quote. I feel as though in this course, most of the texts we've read have had epigraphs and they all serve to manipulate the reader before you've even begun absorbing the actual novel. The Things They Carried's epigraph works to keep up that image that it's a memoir and not a novel; Cat's Cradle states "Nothing in this book is true"; and now Aura gives a statement about the differences in power and ability of men and women.

After reading Aura all the way through, I think of it in context with its epigraph. The women in this novel are weak--Consuelo is 109, withering away, while Aura is some kind of disappearing emanation; yet they also exhibit a dangerous, supernatural kind of power. They control Felipe, at first with the promise of money, then through his lust for Aura. They destroy his will to leave, bringing him under a kind of spell, so that by the end, when he finds himself in bed with Consuelo, he stays, waiting for Aura to reappear. But this is not the female strength I thought I'd find after reading the epigraph. This is skewed, flawed, not something to be admired. Yet I have to admit, there is a mother-born story and a female character fully aware of her own power. Consuelo and Aura are both mothers of fantasy, creating a beautiful green-eyed girl from the willpower of an old man. "Tu es si fiere de ta beaute; que ne ferais-tu pas pour rester toujours jeune?" roughly translated, this phrase that ends chapter 3 means "you are proud of your beauty; what wouldn't you do to always keep it?" Beauty is a kind of power, a uniquely female one that existed even before women had real power in this world, and Consuelo/Aura translate it into control - of themselves, of Felipe, of where the story goes, though they do not narrate it. But since their power seems to only exist within that dark house, it is real? Are they powerless but unaware of it, a twist on the way Susan Barton holds all the power but never realizes it?