Cuerpo náufrago de Ana Clavel: en busca de una nueva masculinidad

Ana Clavel’s second novel, Shipwrecked Body (2005), focuses on the identity crisis experienced by Antonia, who awakens one morning in a man’s body and asks herself if she continues to be the same or if her new body has made her into a different person. In contrast to novels that chart identity through the exploration of the past, Antonia’s search for selfhood gravitates around her current physical, social and cultural circumstances. The present study analyzes the stages of Antonia’s masculine socialization as she attempts to resolve the discord between her female identity and her new biological sex. During the process of masculinization that she endures, Antonia imitates masculine normative behaviors and suppresses the characteristics that feminize her, which positions her new identity as a performative act. The objective of the present study, therefore, is to discuss the ways in which Clavel situates masculinity as a social construct through an examination of the protagonist’s conditioning and her active and voluntary cultivation of manhood for the sake of enjoying the privileges afforded to men in a patriarchal society