In the Novel Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia, Several of the women in Garcia's novel suffer from apparent mental illness. Celia is admitted to an asylum after Jorge leaves her in the hands of his jealous mother and sister. Felicia attempts suicide and the murder of her son after her husband brutalizes and deserts her, and Lourdes suffers alternately from bulimia and anorexia after her rape and escape to the US. Rather than assigning diagnoses to these characters (eg. Felicia is suffering the effects of syphilis; Lourdes is suffering from PTSD; Celia has post-partum depression), consider mental illness in the novel as a symbol. 

Requirement

How do the particular ways in which mental illness manifests itself in these women's lives comment on the failings of their culture? 

What is Garcia saying about why these women become or seem to become "mad"? 

What does she imply drives them mad and why? What, if anything, helps restore their sanity and why?

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In Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia the manifestation of mental illness in several female characters serves as a symbolic commentary on the failin... View the full answer