The cancellation of femininity and patriarchal power in Elena Garro's Un traje rojo para un duelo (A Red Suit for Mourning).

Abstract

The article analyzes the character of Grandmother Pili in Elena Garro’s Un traje rojo para un duelo through a gender-based lens, demonstrating how this figure embodies both the cancellation of femininity and the internalization of patriarchal power. Using a critical–descriptive approach grounded in psychoanalytic theory (Freud), gender studies (Sau, Irigaray) and literary analyses of Garro’s narrative, the study explores how old age, the loss of reproductive roles and the rupture with traditional feminine stereotypes turn Pili into a “non-subject,” a monstrous being whose identity becomes masculinized and symbolically linked to the demonic. The author shows that Pili transgresses normative femininity—associated with silence, obedience and passivity—by exercising control, manipulation and psychological violence over other female characters: Natalia, Remedios and Irene. The article also examines how Garro constructs this figure through physical deformation, an authoritative voice and the metaphor of the “Gigante,” a tiny demonic entity that represents patriarchal power internalized and enacted by older women invested with authority. The objective is to demonstrate that the novel depicts a model of micropolitical violence—micromachismos—that operates within the private sphere to erase the feminine. The study concludes that Grandmother Pili functions as the extreme symbol of patriarchy: a woman stripped of femininity, aligned with the very system that oppresses and destroys other women.