Woman between Mirrors is a work of dialogue/inner dialogue about, primarily, the feminine personality and about challenging and exploring female identity. Helena Parente Cunha is a Brazilian writer from Bahia and this intense, experimental work full of revelatory flashes and irony at the very least helps to show that Bahia is not just the land of dusky beauties that Jorge Amado, the most famous writer on Bahia, popularised in books like Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon. Cunha does, however, use images from Afro-Brazilian myth in Woman between Mirrors. Brazil, so caught between different traditions; antique Portugal, avant-garde Europe, US mass culture and African religions, is perhaps a uniquely interesting situation to look at in search of the 20th century personality This is essentially the undertaking of Woman between Mirrors and of Clarice Lispector’s related if more accessible writing.

When you were little, you still reacted to things. At least a little. Today you don’t react any more. Paralyzed, apathetic, alienated, indifferent.

I’m patient. Being soft but ready to act. I give consent if I’m given consent, I can be patient about accepting people, including the woman who writes me. When I was little, I still hadn’t developed very much patience, and I paid for it more than once. Hence the intense fear and panic I felt, that came from my not being able to adjust to my father’s temperament. By giving up the things I want, I can live the life I want. Not a bad way to cut down on walls. At peace with my husband and sons.

What you call peace is your ability to efface yourself.

The woman who writes me is continually getting into fights because of her egotism, her vanity. She’s always insisted on having her own way, whatever the cost. Little by little I stopped making decisions about things. I want what my husband wants. Being soft but ready to act. So simple. There are the windows of my former house. If my father wouldn’t let me stand at the window watching the street and the people going by, often I’d start crying, and get punished for it. If I had spontaneously given up my window, I wouldn’t have suffered the fear of punishment or felt so terribly sorry. The windows of my former house are shut up.