Empty Wardrobes

Empty Wardrobes / Maria Judite de Carvalho
trans. from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
Two Lines Press, 2021, c1966.
184 p.

I was drawn to this book by the title and that cover image; but it's something quite different from what I'd expected. 

Set in Portugal in the 60s, we meet Dora Rosario, a widow of ten years. She has a teen daughter, Lisa, who is both beautiful and hard. Dora, however, is a constant woman - she's been mourning her husband faithfully, letting herself get a bit dowdy and working all day in an antique shop in the quiet, alone. At 36, she is presented as an old woman, past her prime. But then her mother-in-law lets slip something about Dora's saintly husband that changes her perspective on her entire married life and widowhood. 

Dora falls into a brief affair with Ernesto, the man her close friend has been partnered up with for ages. Ernesto with won't move in together or marry her, though. One day he finds Dora at the shop, and they begin a desultory affair that both brightens Dora up and makes her feel guilty. There was no need for her to feel anything, though, because in the end he leaves both of them in a moment, once he meets a very young girl who knows what she wants. 

This story is about more than plotlines, though. It really looks at a variety of women who are all independent in a way, but are still shaped by the presence of men in their lives. Their choices and lifestyles are determined by their relationships to men, and the options open to them are tied to men as well, even if those men are hovering in the distance or in Dora's case, already dead. 

It was both a slow burn and a powerful read. The conclusion was sudden and I did not expect it at all. But it was perfect, a logical conclusion to the story that the author was building. The three generations of women in the story all face similar struggles, all based in patriarchal expectations of women that are outlined without sentiment or gloss in this short but startling story.