SOURCE: "Porcelain Face/Rotten Flesh: The Doll in Papales de Pandora," in Chasqui, Vol. XXIII, No. 2, November, 1994, pp. 95-101.

In the essay below, Rivera discusses the significance of the doll motif in Ferré's short story collection Papales de Pandora, concluding that "Ferré seems to warn her readers that when a woman's voice and sexuality is confined and 'gagged' by male oppression, she begins to rot and smell as decomposed flesh beneath the ever passive beauty of her porcelain face."

"En esta casa las mujeres hablan cuando las gallinas mean," says Don Julio de la Valle to his wife in "Maldito amor"(24). This popular saying summarizes the silent role that has been prescribed for women in Puerto Rican social, political, economic, and religious institutions. Hélène Cixous warns us that women have been silent for a long time: "Muffled throughout their history, they have lived in dreams...