THE DOLL QUEEN (La muñeca reina)
by Carlos Fuentes, 1964

"The Doll Queen" originally appeared as "La muñeca reina" in Cantar de ciegos in 1964. It is one of several tales by Carlos Fuentes that involve variations on the theme of the triple lunar goddess (maiden, matron, and witch or hag), deity of birth, love, and death, visible as the new, full, and old or waning moon. Worshiped under many names, the goddess is associated with numerous sacred animals, emblems, and other attributes, as well as with madness, obsession, fertility, spiritual love, and lust, death-in-life and life-in-death. Fuentes, well-acquainted with myths from many cultures, is interested also in the occult and in exotic religions, likewise relevant to understanding "The Doll Queen."

Narrated by a male protagonist, the tale recounts his impulsive search for a long-lost friend, Amilamia, who 15 years before used to play near the place where he studied in a garden or park. Memories of Amilamia reconstruct her as an idealized version of the child or maiden, associated with symbols of the White Goddess: she appears in a "lake of clover," water and three-leaved plants being emblems of the moon goddess. She wears a white skirt (visible sign of virginity) and invariably carries a pocketful of "white blossoms" (associated with the casting of spells). Amilamia is remembered in the wind, "her mouth open and eyes half closed against the streaming air" (the White Goddess traditionally controls the winds). The second stage of the Goddess, nymph or goddess of love, is suggested as a dream of the narrator, "the women in my books, the quintessential female … who assumed the disguise of Queen … the imagined beings of mythology," and as a potential of Amilamia/Aphrodite, insinuated when their last romp acquired unexpected erotic undertones.

Amilamia is not a normal or usual name but one invented by Fuentes, probably referring to the lamia, another legendary being, commonly represented in classical mythology with the head and breast of a woman and the body of a serpent. Lamias were female demons, reputedly vampires, believed to lure youths to where they could suck their blood. In Mexican mythology they are associated with the loss or death of children, specifically with women whose children have died. Amilamia's death proves to be figurative, but such connotations allow Fuentes to suggest the monstrous and to hint at danger while keeping the details of his narrative within the bounds of reality.

After Amilamia disappears from the garden—a microcosm of earth—and the hero goes to seek her, there are analogies with Demeter's search for Persephone (and Amilamia is Kore or Persephone) and with Orpheus seeking Euridice. The hero must figuratively enter the underworld, "descend the hill … cut through that narrow grove," and cross a busy avenue, a figurative Styx, to reach a "gray suburb," "dead-end streets," a tomblike house whose Greek adornments subtly indicate the presence of myth beneath the narrative surface. "Harsh, irregular breathing" heard through the door betrays a sort of Cerberus (watchdog of Hades) whose function is to prevent intercourse between the two worlds, and, indeed, the initial attempt at entry fails. Later description of this guardian terms him an "asthmatic old bear" who wears a "turtle's mask," a composite mythological beast like the lamia and the three-headed hound of Hades with snakes protruding from its neck and shoulders.

Returning under the pretext of conducting an assessment, the narrator discovers a woman of 50, "dressed in black … with no makeup and her salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a knot," with eyes "so indifferent they seem almost cruel." The witchlike appearance and chaplet she carries—a figurative key—identify the woman with Hecate, the Terrible Mother, associated with cruelty and the lower world (death). A clue indicating Amilamia's presence in the tomblike abode is the symbolic fruit "where little teeth have left their mark in the velvety skin and ocher flesh," clearly evoking Persephone and the pomegranate.

When forced to confess the true motive for his visit, the narrator is conducted to the funereal chamber holding the dolls and forgotten toys of Amilamia, with its sickly floral scent and small coffin displaying the "doll queen who presides over the pomp of this royal chamber of death." The doll cadaver maintained in the bedroom is death-in-life, one aspect of the White Goddess. The spectacle convinces the nauseated narrator that Amilamia had died long years before, and he leaves the underworld overcome with sympathy for the bereaved parents. Only chance determines that the story does not end with the supposed revelation of death.

Accidentally discovering the child's card months afterward, he returns in the belief that it may assuage the parent's grief. As he approaches the door, several motifs evoke the goddess of fertility or vegetation (another aspect of the lunar goddess): "Rain is beginning to fall … bringing out of the earth … the odor of dewy benediction that stirs the humus and quickens all that lives." The dwarfish, deformed body of the "misshapen girl" found in the wheelchair with a "hump on her chest" incarnates a degraded variant of the myth; the comic book suggests that she may also be mentally retarded. The guardian's reaction is that of Cerberus preventing contact with the outsider: "Get back! Devil's spawn! Do I have to beat you again?" Persephone imprisoned, Amilamia appears here as the goddess of death-in-life, unable to leave the tomb or to participate in the world beyond.

As a self-conscious writer, an admirable critic, and a literary theoretician well aware of the mythological sources of his inspiration, Fuentes (who is well read and fluent in English) may have been familiar with The White Goddess or The Golden Bough, or he may have used original myths. The usefulness of mythic analysis of Fuentes's works using Aztec deities as the archetypes has been repeatedly demonstrated; classical mythology is a comparably significant instrument.

—Janet Pérez