52 pages • 1 hour read
Manuel PuigKiss of the Spider Woman
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1976A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Upon returning to her cell, Molina offers Valentin the food she says her mother brought, insisting that Valentin stop eating prison food. When Valentin asks her to share a movie like the one about the panther woman, Molina starts recounting the plot of a movie about zombies. Meanwhile, both characters’ thoughts wander. Molina thinks of a night shift nurse sleepwalking and caring for a patient who may be contagious, while Valentin thinks of shattered glass and skin, cold nights, dank walls, and “mass cards of saints and whores” (168).
In the movie, a woman travels to the Caribbean to marry her fiancé, a widower and plantation owner. She moves in and meets the majordomo, who makes demands of the widower, has him sign papers, and destroys his alcohol. The night before the marriage, the woman is attacked by a ghostlike figure who turns out to be the widower’s first wife. She faints and wakes up to the housekeeper taking care of her.
The couple marries, and the woman learns from the housekeeper that the island is full of vodou, zombies, and witch doctors who have control over the zombies. Molina says that “the only thing [the zombies] get to do is obey and suffer” (167). Many of these zombies were once workers on the island’s plantations who agitated for better pay and working conditions; in response, the plantation owners conspired with the witch doctors to turn them into undead laborers. Meanwhile, the newlyweds settle into married life, but strange occurrences continue to disturb the woman. On one occasion, the woman expresses interest in an old, overgrown house, but the husband warns her never to visit it. At other times, she and her husband wake in the night to the noise of drums, and her husband leaves the room; the woman later finds him passed out drunk.
One day while her husband is away, the woman explores the old house and discovers a vodou altar and a doll resembling herself. While there, the woman encounters a zombie as well as the first wife; she is almost attacked again, but the housekeeper saves her, ordering the wife to bed and the zombie to protect the woman.
Valentin, still sick, tells Molina, “I feel like I’m dead, I swear I do. And I have this notion that nothing except [Marta] could ever revive me again” (176). He dictates a letter to Molina to be sent to Marta. He worries he will die and never touch a woman again; he also says he wishes there were a God. However, Valentin then destroys the letter. The two lie there, watching the shadows on the wall of their cell, until they fall asleep.
Chapter 10 Summary
Valentin wakes up late. He wants coffee, but Molina says she threw it away. Valentin, feeling better for the first time in days, returns to studying but can’t seem to focus. Molina makes food for them and, upon request, returns to the zombie movie plot.
As the housekeeper brings the woman home from the abandoned house, she tells her about the husband’s family. The husband’s father, it turns out, had the islanders murdered when they staged a rebellion, turning them into zombies. The husband tried to destroy the zombies, but while he was doing this, the witch doctor extorted sex from his wife by threatening to kill her husband if she refused. Upon finding his first wife with the witch doctor, the husband took a dagger and killed her. The housekeeper knows all of this because she is married to the witch doctor.
When the woman arrives home, she and her husband have a huge fight, and her husband starts drinking. Later that night, she learns her husband has left the house and headed for the witch doctor’s hideout. She prevails on the majordomo to help her search for her husband, but he leaves her when they are deep in the jungle. While she waits, she begins to hear drums and runs to a nearby hut; it is abandoned, but then she notices the sound of chanting and starts to head toward it.
Molina stops for the night. The next morning, Molina admits to Valentin that she told the guards to stop bringing coffee, as she says the prison food keeps making Valentin sick. She offers marble cake to Valentin, saying, “[C]an’t I just coddle you a little bit?” (193), which causes Valentin to lose his temper and destroy some of Molina’s food. He later apologizes, saying he wouldn’t have made it through this sickness without Molina. He asks for forgiveness.
Chapters 9-10 Analysis
Now that Molina is revealed to be a spy, her conversations with Valentin take on a more ominous tone. Because she’s working on behalf of the warden, she seems to be in control of the relationship. She makes requests, tells stories, and carries the conversation as Valentin suffers from food poisoning, which is meant to weaken him and thus facilitate Molina’s manipulation. At the same time, Molina’s motives remain ambiguous. While she presumably would like to be released, caring for Valentin also allows her access to the wifely/maternal role she craves: She takes care of Valentin in the same way that she has dreamed of taking care of Gabriel, including deciding when and what he eats. This highlights the power associated with a gender role conventionally viewed in terms of disempowerment, developing the theme of The Fluidity of Gender and Orientation.
As Valentin becomes weaker, he starts to reminisce about his ex-girlfriend, Marta, opening up about his true feelings in a way that suggests Molina’s efforts to draw him out are working. Moreover, the fact that he longs to be with Marta again means he’s straying, mentally, from his political group, which discourages intimate relationships: “I miss you like crazy, and the only thing I feel is torture of loneliness […] It’s so terrible to lose hope […] and I say this like a true Christian, as if afterward another life were waiting…but there’s nothing waiting, is there?” (179). Valentin’s reference to his lack of religious belief underscores that he is starting to give up, which is what Molina needs and the warden wants. As Valentin starts to regain his strength, the balance of power again shifts; when Molina tells him to “hurry back” from using the bathroom, Valentin loses his temper at the order. Later, though, Valentin asks Molina for forgiveness, which shows how much Valentin has come to care for him.
The movies referenced in the novel continue to parallel Valentin and Molina’s situation. The zombies, for instance, were rebels poisoned by the witch doctor for resisting an oppressive regime—a direct reference to Valentin’s poisoning at the hands of the warden. That these rebels are now being manipulated further, parallels Molina’s position as well as Valentin’s, as both are ultimately political pawns. It is likewise significant that the capitalist/colonialist exploitation of the islanders intersects with a power struggle between the husband and his unfaithful wife. This mirrors the premise of the novel, where the relationship between Valentin and Molina—and its gendered implications—unfolds against a backdrop of political oppression.
