The Naked Woman by Armonía Somers

Content Warning: mention of rape, violence against women

Almost two years ago, I was taking a course where I had to undertake the grueling task of reading the entire unabridged version of Don Quixote, alongside Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Natsume Sōseki’s Kusamakura. Armonía Somers’ The Naked Woman has the feverish, magical elements of Kusamakura, and the absurd comedy of a Don Quixote episode, but set in Uruguay and absent of the tired masculine perspective. I know what I just described sounds either insane or impossible, but The Naked Woman truly is a whirlwind story that is complex despite its brevity.

Somers starts her novel with a surreal, yet coherent sequence that feels cinematic in nature. On her thirtieth birthday, Rebeca Linke realizes her dissatisfaction with the course of her womanhood and makes a calculated effort to release herself from the conventions she’s conformed to. This effort–which is successful–materializes in her journey to an isolated cabin, where she strips naked, and cuts her head off: “Once, the throat had been severed, all questions came to an end.” With the severing of her head–which she magically reattaches shortly after, she becomes a new woman, one with many names, though she is often referred to as Eve. 

Her physical transformation is symbolic of a new understanding of the world that is not overthought, but rather driven by her freedom to act on her natural desires. “[She is] beholden to the present,” nothing and no one else. Another mark of her transformation is an appreciation for aspects of her body that we are told we are not allowed to love, noting that“[when] she reached her breast she felt as though she were rediscovering herself after a long bout of amnesia. They had lost their former pertness, but their suggestive heft made them much more satisfying than before.” Able to recognize the beauty inflected by age is something she is only able to understand once she loses collective notions of beauty. 

Eve maunders the forest near her cabin, one that also borders a nearby village. After being spotted by a pair of twins who belong to the village, Eve’s presence threatens the peace of the village, her unabashed nakedness waking a suppressed violent desire in the men. Early on the village functions on a united front, often following each other in thoughtless actions, but the longer they spend hunting Eve the more the men fall to their individual desires and act on them at their wives’ expense. The descriptions of rape and domestic violence that ensue are an uncomfortable, yet unapologetic illustration of the way patriarchal structures have enabled men to go so far as to enact violence in order to achieve their own gratification.

Darkly comical scenes are intermittently placed between searing depictions of such violence. One scene that sticks out to me is early into the hunt for Eve when the men part to allow “one man, who was well versed in crime literature” to investigate the area where Eve was first spotted because he said “words that no one could understand, but the smartest among them believed to be related to something beyond the comprehension of ordinary man.” The crowd is astounded by his supposed genius when he discovers a fingernail he believes belongs to the naked woman. Somers masterfully peppers in satirical moments like these to signify how the pervasive male ego simultaneously dominates, deludes, and destroys the village. 

Where I find the novel to really shine are the intimate moments of transformation and meditation Eve experiences either on her own, or in the presence of nature. The only way I feel the experience could have been heightened for me as a reader is if I was able to see more of Rebeca in the beginning of the novel. I understand that it would not be conducive to the symbolic transformation of Rebeca to Eve, for Eve to have many flashbacks of her life as Rebeca. However, having more of Rebeca’s story prelude the transformation to Eve would have grounded and informed her meditations and meandering dialogue. 

Despite this, my praise for this novel could extend far past a point you could bear. Reading The Naked Woman reminded me of some of the internalized misogynistic views I had towards other girls when I was in middle school. I grew up on an island, which led to a point in time where girls my age would post pictures on the beach with their friends, bikini tops loose in the wind above their naked backs. I used to feel confusion and disgust when I saw these kinds of pictures, wondering what kind of attention they were looking for and why. But now, I’d like to apologize for the misunderstanding. I now recognize those photos as a moment of establishing bodily autonomy. A moment of severance from the male ego that governs society. A moment of rebellion driven solely by desire that, as women, we deserve to have.