Dissident femininity, non-normative motherhood and harmful families in “The husband's shirt” by Nélida Piñón

Abstract

This article analyzes “The husband's shirt”, by Nélida Piñón. It is intended to demonstrate that this text offers a suigéneris representation of women, which is no longer seen as a socially handicapped (weak, passive, dependet), but is presented as someone who has agency, that is, that he is capable of problematizing his circumstance and, furthermore, he does something to overcome it. Likewise, we want to prove that, in this story, the "bad mother" is represented, understood as the female character who is not willing to follow the social mandates that motherhood imposes. This "bad mother" privileges her individual condition rather than that referred to her children. Finally, it also wants to show that "The husband's shirt" is a story in which the difficulty of family relationships is problematized, those that do not ensure affection or harmony between the people who make up a family.