SOURCE: “Beyond the Mother Icon: Rereading the Poetry of Gabriela Mistral,” in Revista Hispanica Moderna, Vol. 50, No. 2, December, 1997, pp. 327–34.

In the following essay, Ryan-Kobler argues that Mistral's poetry contradicts the accepted, simplified image of Mistral as the saintly mother of Latin America.

The psychoanalyst and feminist Julia Kristeva posits that the speaking subject's unconscious drives persist in the linguistic, psychic and societal orders. These rhythmic drives, or the Semiotic, initially orient the infant towards the body of the mother. When the child passes through the mirror stage and the oedipus complex, this attachment is repressed. Here, the father intervenes, sundering the bond with the mother, but reconciling the child to the estranged mother through the Symbolic medium of language. Kristeva maintains that the maternal Semiotic is not totally repressed after this rupture with the mother, but rather courses the Symbolic order of language in the form of the...