“The Condemned Door”

This text focuses on the specific dependence on the mother role which the childless woman in Julio Cortázar’s short story “The Condemned Door” warms to. The present work studies “fictional motherhood” and some of the possible explanations of the special double “play” of comforting the unborn son that exists both in the mind of the woman and in the mind of her neighboring man who seems to verify the child’s existence. This is a story of an obsession with what has no body, but exists in the form of a thought, a desire, and consciousness. The narrative tells how the dependence of the other reveals a need you may well feel too.