The Naked Woman

September 15, 2018
One woman's feminist awakening leads a village to ruin.Nearly 70 years after it was published, Somers' haunting and timeless novella has been translated into English for the first time. Somers, a Uruguayan feminist who died in 1994, recounts one woman's transgressive journey toward autonomy. On her 30th birthday, a bored Rebeca Linke finds herself longing for a remarkable thing that has yet to (and may never) happen. Under cover of darkness, she travels to her country cottage, withdraws from the world, and casts away all societal responsibilities. Beneath the moonlight, in a dreamlike state, Linke decapitates herself--symbolically, of course--and re-enters the world naked and free. Slipping into bedrooms and appearing in fields, her ghostly, erotic presence--now calling herself Eve--quickly drives the village insane. Sick with sexual desire and lost in their misogyny, the men simultaneously dream of her and dream of killing her. It's not only the men who fear what Eve will do to their orderly yet fragile existences; the women resent her nudity and wonder if she'll undo the normalcy they enjoy. Somers' similes are as gorgeous as they are effective: "But now the man's desire had swelled like a river after the rainy season" and "he hacked away at her as if she were a tree trunk." Imbued with magical realism, mysticism, and biblical themes, Somers' novella poses questions still relevant today: "Had she, a naked, destitute woman, really caused all this madness? Or was she was being used as an excuse for something already lurking inside of them?" The larger truth is as naked as the woman haunting the countryside.A lusciously brutal resurrected classic.

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Starred review from September 24, 2018
The first English-translated work of the late Somers (1914–1994) is a momentous allegorical tale of power and lust from 1950 that remains relevant in 2018. On her 30th birthday, the sullen Rebeca Linke leaves her home, hops on a train, and travels to a cottage deep within the wilderness, where she strips nude and tries to cut off her own head. Surviving this self-inflicted attack, she reattaches her cranium, sheds her “conventional consciousness,” and wanders the nearby fields and forests. Cut by tree branches while moving through the forest, Rebeca’s nude form inspires a dangerous lust in the men who catch glimpses of it. Rebeca passes through a secluded house in the woods, and her presence arouses the woodsman inside—who, after she leaves, rapes his wife. Later, a pair of farmers flee when they spy her and spread word of her existence through a local village. Soon, the village men form a mob, determined to find the naked woman skirting the trees, and a misogynistic frenzy of violence and sexual envy erupts. This short yet undeniably powerful take on the viciousness of the male ego exposes the soft underbelly of “civil society,” showing that just beneath the surface is man’s base animal nature. Somers’s novel is a surreal, gripping experience.