Disappearing History: Listening and Trauma in Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden

Abstract

Ariel Dorfman’s 1991 play Death and the Maiden is set in the present time in a country that ‘is probably Chile’ but ‘could be any country that has just departed from a dictatorship’.¹ Taking place in a remote beach house primarily on a single night and day, the play follows the actions of Paulina, who has been tortured by the previous regime and whose husband Gerardo, a human rights lawyer, has just been appointed to head a truth commission established by the new transitional government. Surprised in the middle of the night by Roberto, a stranger who has given Gerardo a ride home and returns unexpectedly at midnight, Paulina believes she recognizes the voice and idioms of the man who has tortured her while she was blindfolded. She ultimately manages to capture Roberto in the house and stage a ‘trial’ at gunpoint in which, with the coerced cooperation of her husband, she forces from the stranger a confession while playing a tape of the Schubert quartet that was played while she was raped. Unsatisfied by the ‘confession’, Paulina considers killing Roberto, an act left suspended in the play, and the last scene ends with Paulina believing that she sees Roberto (or his ghost) staring at her in a phantasmatic light as the Schubert quartet is being performed.