Mary Wykeham: The Surrealist Who Embraced A Religious Life And Became A Nun

Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine in 1920, Clarice Lispector and her family emigrated to Brazil when she was an infant, fleeing pogroms (mass expelling and massacre of Jews from the Russian Empire) Her mother died of progressive paralysis, believed to be a result of syphilis contracted from a violent rape and attack, before the family fled to Brazil. It’s widely believed—though never confirmed—that Clarice was conceived in hopes that having another child would “cure” her mother, based on a folk belief that pregnancy could improve the symptoms of neurological disease. The death of her mother at nine years old profoundly affected her sense of self and emotional language. Her writing often reflects a deep and almost mythic longing for the maternal—both as a source of pain and mystery. While in law school, she began publishing crônicas—short, lyrical columns—for newspapers, often blending mundane observations with spiritual and philosophical reflection. At 23, she published her first novel, “Near to the Wild Heart” written in a stream of consciousness. She became the first woman to win the prestigious Graça Aranha Prize and was hailed as revolutionary. The novel placing her among the ranks of literary modernists like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Around the same time, she married a diplomat and spent the next decade living in Europe and the U.S., raising two sons—Pedro and Paulo—while continuing to write. Motherhood was both sacred and shattering. She loved her sons deeply, but never romanticized motherhood. She spoke of it as a transformation—one that dissolved her ego, sharpened her tenderness, and at times made her feel “forever incomplete.” Her son Pedro suffered from schizophrenia—a lifelong struggle that deeply affected her. In 1966, a fire in her Rio apartment nearly killed her and left her right hand permanently impaired. She continued to write through immense physical pain. Her final novel, The Hour of the Star, was published shortly before her death in 1977, and is now taught in schools, quoted by feminists, philosophers, and poets alike, and cherished as one of Brazil’s greatest novels.