The concept of transformation is evident in Silvina Ocampo’s, The House Made of Sugar. The author leads characters to liberation by permitting them to overcome gender boundaries and implicating destruction on those who are unable to overcome the boundaries. The two books illustrate the theme of transformation. In the short story, The House Made of Sugar, the transformation is negatively characterized by a transphobic scope. In contrast, in 12 years a slave, the transformation is positively characterized by abolishing slavery. However, some similarities are evident: just as the transformation in The House Made of Sugar permits characters to overcome boundaries, similarly is the case in Twelve Years A Slave.
The short story revolves around a married couple that has bought a home. The unnamed husband tells of how Cristina, his wife, refused to live in a home previously inhabited owing to superstitions. The husband locates a recently renovated house which seems new. He lies to Cristina that the house has never had inhabited as he thinks Cristina has silly superstitions, and they move in.
Christina starts showing strange behaviors, starting with her excitement when receiving a dress, she claims to have ordered, though her husband is not convinced that she was the one who ordered it. She acts as though she has always been in the neighborhood, and her neighbor refers to her as Violeta. She goes ahead to ask her husband if he would prefer this name. Her husband finds her speaking to mysterious persons and in mysterious places. Witnessing her change, his behavior also changes. He becomes anxious, controlling, and paranoid.
The negative transformation is evident as the story ends when Christina’s life is entirely overtaken by Violeta’s, and her husband is bitter and estranged until she finally disappears. The external source avows that “the story uses a transphobic trope” (Lieblich, 2022, 1st paragraph). Lieblich, 2022, is a source that analyzes Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave and the cultural significance of this slave narrative. The House Made of Sugar allows characters to overcome Gender transformation through a transphobic trope as Violeta takes over Christina’s life. What is responsible for this transfer is the fact that men “disguise themselves as women to enter my house” (Ocampo, 2015). This trope is treacherous to the point it slips everywhere, spreading the notion that men might cross-dress to prey on women. This notion bolsters transphobia in the gender’s transformation, which is negative
Twelve Years a Slave, a slave narrative by Solomon Northup, is characterized by great transformation and a positive aspect of abolishment. Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, was kidnapped in 1841 in Washington city (Lieblich, 2022). He was later rescued from a cotton plantation in Louisiana in 1853. After his 1853 rescue from a cotton plantation, Solomon Northup’s slavery experience became national news. Through promotions by abolitionist leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Frederick Douglass, Northup’s book sales rose, and it became a best-seller, hitting half a dozen printings. Just as there is a transformation in the short story The House Made of Sugar: here, we see the transformation of a slave into a confident and brave storyteller.
Instead of the negative transphobic scope, Northup stresses how terrorizing the enslaved black persons suffered relentless violence and served to preserve the enslaving authority. In Solomon’s account of his life as a newly kidnapped man, shackles, paddles, and whips repetitively appear in his narrative. Northup’s Endurance is evident when he overcomes blow after blow inflicted on his naked body and wakes up in a slave pen. This further exemplifies his transformation into a hopeful slave determined that his storytelling would help ease the suffering.
In conclusion, characters overcome boundaries in The House Made of Sugar to achieve liberation. Similarly, we can see the quest by Solomon Northup to narrate the ordeal that enslaved people are undergoing with the hope that they will overcome the suffering and torment boundaries and attain liberation. Through his storytelling, the reader can see an enslaved person who has transformed into a storyteller aiming to achieve the slave liberation goal.
References
Lieblich, M. (2022). The Cultural Significance of Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave. U.S History Science. Web.
Ocampo, S. (2015). The House Made of Sugar: A short story from the collection Thus Were Their Faces.