SOURCE: “La doble historia del doctor Valmy: A View from the Feminine,” in Symposium, Vol. XL, No. 2, Summer, 1986, pp. 131–39.

In the following essay, Pennington focuses on the character of Mary to show that Buero Vallejo's La doble historia del doctor Valmy indicts patriarchal society in addition to political torture.

Antonio Buero Vallejo's La doble historia del doctor Valmy (1964) brings to the stage the difficult issue of political torture. Daniel Barnes, the protagonist, works as a member of a security police force in the fictional country Surelia, and as part of his profession regularly utilizes physical torture as a means of obtaining confessions from his prisoners. He does not relish his work, however, and much of the action of the play charts his efforts to win permission to leave his employment. By focusing on the predicament of the torturer instead of the fate of the victim, the playwright prevents...