52 pages • 1 hour read
Manuel PuigKiss of the Spider Woman
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1976A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 15-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
Written entirely as a report by those surveilling her, this chapter focuses on what Molina does post-release. She met with family members, talked on the phone with friends, and spoke briefly with Gabriel a few times; however, their plans to meet up fell through, and the report notes that Gabriel seemed uninterested in further contact. At home, Molina’s attention seemed to drift toward the prison. Noting that Molina one day spent an hour waiting at a particular corner, the report says that while she did not seem aware of the surveillance, she was likely in contact with people who were. The next day, she withdrew all her money from the bank, and the day after that, she made a call from a public phone, agreeing to meet someone—presumably Valentin’s comrades—at a designated place. The police followed her to this location, but as they were in the process of arresting her for interrogation, there were shots from a passing vehicle; Molina was killed and an agent was wounded. The report speculates that Valentin’s group wanted to keep Molina from confessing important information; it also suggests that Molina was likely hoping either to escape with the group or to die at the group’s hands.
Chapter 16 Summary
Valentin has been tortured and interrogated and is being given medication by the prison doctor, who is shocked by what Valentin was subjected to. As the morphine enters his body, Valentin drifts into a dreamlike state. He imagines himself with Marta, having a conversation, kissing her, saying he’ll tell her everything so that she won’t leave him, and admitting that Molina’s death was his fault. Images from the various movies Molina recounted blend together, and Valentin imagines a spider woman weeping and smiling as she points him toward a banquet. Valentin is sad but believes, “[T]he only one who knows for sure is [Molina], if he was sad or happy to die that way, sacrificing himself” (279); Valentin believes “he let himself be killed because that way he could die like some heroine in a movie” (279). He tells the imagined Marta that he can’t sleep without Molina’s storytelling but that he loves Marta; so long as she doesn’t ask for the names of his comrades, he will hold on to her forever. Marta, tells him, “[T]his dream is short, but this dream is happy” (281), and the novel ends.
Chapters 15-16 Analysis
Molina’s death closely resembles the fate of many of the women in the movies he recounts—in particular, Lexi’s—further associating Molina with the kind of femininity these women represent. This is certainly how those around her interpret the event. The report claims that Molina knew she might die, and Valentin suggests that perhaps she “let himself be killed because that way he could die like some heroine in a movie, and none of that business about a just cause” (279). There are also contextual clues that hint at her motivations. When Molina is released, she returns to her mother and her spirits seem to lift: She reconnects with a few relatives and friends and even takes a job, which makes it seem like she’s adjusted to her old life. However, Molina also keeps staring off toward “the existing site of the present penitentiary” (266), implying that she hasn’t forgotten Valentin and misses him. Moreover, Molina has no reason to attempt to exchange a message with Valentin’s political group beyond her relationship with Valentin, as she has made no secret of her disdain for politics. All of this implies that Molina dies “for” Valentin—a conventionally self-sacrificing death that reveals the limits of The Fluidity of Gender and Orientation.
Nevertheless, the way Puig recounts Molina’s death lends it some ambiguity. Because readers witness the event through a sterile, secondhand report, Molina’s motivations remain unknowable in the strictest sense. Valentin’s dream of a “spider woman”—the epithet he himself has given to Molina—underscores this point:
[P]oor creature…she can’t move, there in the deepest part of the jungle she’s trapped in a spider’s web, or no, the spiderweb is growing out of her own body, the threads are coming out of her waist and her hips […] ‘Doesn’t she speak?’ no, she’s crying, or no, she isn’t, she’s smiling but a tear rolls out […] I ask her why she’s crying and in a close-up that covers the whole screen at the end of the film she answers me that that’s just what can never be known, because the ending is enigmatic (280).
This highly metatextual passage applies to the novel’s own ending. The image of Molina as ensnared within her own spider form could harken to the idea that her investment in the feminine gender role, which she weaponized to spy on Valentin, kills her. Likewise, her silence can be read as passivity, especially in a novel interested in The Power of Language. At the same time, Molina’s refusal to explain what she is thinking and feeling preserves her as an “enigmatic” figure, denying Valentin easy resolution even when she appears as a figment of his own imagination.
Valentin’s fate is similarly ambiguous. His guilt and grief over Molina’s death are clear in his dream of the spider woman, but as the dream continues, Puig implies that Molina has also freed him in some way. In his dream, Valentin is famished, and the spider woman points him in the direction of food. In the context of Valentin’s history of self-denial, this suggests that his experiences with Molina have opened him up to pleasure once more—e.g., romantic involvement with Marta, his ex-girlfriend, who left him because of the cause but features prominently throughout the dream. However, Valentin also reiterates his devotion to the revolution, remarking, “I’m going to be strong again, because my comrades are waiting for me to resume the age-old fight” (281). In response, he imagines Marta saying to him, “That’s the only thing I don’t ever want to know, the name of your comrades” (281), and he expresses relief over this reconciliation of his personal and political lives.
However, Marta’s next words imply that reconciliation may only be possible in fantasy: “No, Valentin, beloved, that [losing Marta] will never take place, because this dream is short but this dream is happy” (281). Here, Marta highlights the transience of Valentin’s morphine-induced dream, which has allowed Valentin to escape the way Molina had done with his storytelling. Paradoxically, however, she also claims that one aspect of the dream—her presence—will last forever. This could imply that the impression the dream leaves will drive Valentin to seek Marta out, but it may also simply mean that the dream will remain a cherished memory once Valentin returns to the cause. Consequently, The Meaning and Value of Liberation remain open to interpretation as the novel concludes.
