Jacob Schulman
World Lit Analysis
September 23, 2006
Ms. Grgas
Short Story Final Project
An excerpt from The New Morality and the Working Class called, “New
Woman,” written by Alexandra Kollontai, describes her view on the “perfect” woman. According to Kollontai, the perfect woman is not only a woman, but a heroine, “heroines with independent demands on life, heroines who assert their personality, heroines who protest against the universal servitude of woman in the
State.” She also says this “new woman” is not the “’spouse,’ the wife who was the shadow of the husband, a supplement, an appendage.” Kollontai’s views apply to certain characters in the short stories, but others do not. Belisa from
“Two Words,” and Oganda from “The Rain Came,” are characterized as two radically different women, one who fits the description of the “new woman” and one who does not.
Belisa Crepusculario is the epitome of the ideal woman described by
Alexandra Kollontai. Kollontai says that the new women are those “…who assert their personality, heroines who protest against the universal servitude of woman in the State…” Also, the best type of woman is the “single woman.” Not the
“spouse” or “the wife who was the shadow of the husband, a supplement, an appendage.” Belisa is characterized as this type of strong, independent, feral woman. She doesn’t want to end up like her siblings—dead. She knew that she doesn’t want to settle for being a prostitute or a servant, and that she needed to give herself something to live for. Al lende writes that Belisa “saved her life and in the process accidentally discovered writing,
” (Allende, 213). She instantly became enraptured and mesmerized by the power of the words on the page, even though she had no idea what they meant or how to pronounce them. From that moment on, she was determined to learn how to read and write, and she wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way. She paid everything she had to learn to read and write and then she read the dictionary cover to cover and threw it in the ocean. She had overcome significant obstacles and she knew that it would pay off for her in the end.
The first point in the story however, in which we see the true magnitude of
Belisa’s power involved El Mulato. Belisa was not afraid of his gun or the fact that

he could have killed her. She resisted him, and she demonstrated her power not by brute force, but through her intellectual prowess. She forces El Mulato to realize that he can’t just get anything he wants with a gun, and that the power of intellectual prowess is very strong. This concept is what ultimately causes the
Colonel’s downfall. When Belisa gives him his two words, he undergoes a radical emotional change within. The power of those two little words is enough to capture him, and he is able to respect Belisa, and realize that she is not just another ordinary woman. “She is independent inwardly and self-reliant outwardly.” Through her intellectual prowess, she is able to save the Colonel’s life. When his men realize that he is going to die soon, El Mulato rushes to find
Belisa and to force her to give him the two words, so that they won’t be as special. But, Belisa again resists, and for one more time she demonstrates her power and strength. She is the heroine, and she is the one responsible for saving the Colonel’s life.
Oganda is the type of woman that Kollontai would not deem a “new woman.” She isn’t the same type of woman as Belisa; she doesn’t have the same initiatives as her. Part of this is due to the fact that she grew up as the daughter of the chief of the village. So, when everyone goes to have a meeting in the village but she is told that she cannot go, she immediately thinks that it is concerning her future marriage.
“’It must be marriage,’ she concluded,” (Ogot,
383). This comment alone would prevent her from being a “new woman,” because Kollontai explicitly states that the “new woman” is a single woman. So, for the first part of the story, she is preoccupied with the possibilities of the men that she wants to marry. This is typical of the woman that Kollontai wants to leave in the past, not the wome n “who fight for their rights as representatives of their sex.” So, when her father tells her what she must do, she wants to fight it.
“Forgetting that there was only one door in the hut, Oganda fought desperately to find another exit. She must fight for her life. But there was none, ” (Ogot, 384).
Oganda does not want to die, and she doesn’t think it’s fair that she is the one that must. All of the people of the village are counting on her to bring the rain by sacrificing herself to the lake monster, but she just can’t force herself to believe that. Her fear and lack of strength again cements that fact that she is an “old woman.”

However, Oganda does realize that there is no way around it
—she must die so that her entire village can live. The village people praise her, and tell her that she is the “lucky” one. But, Oganda dreads the moment when she must leave, but she knows it is imminent. So when Oganda leaves, she is succumbing to fate. When she finally arrives at the sacred land of the lake monster, she is saved by her own “knight in shining armor.” Osinda comes to save her, and she goes with him. A “new woman” wouldn’t have let herself be saved by a man, it would have been the other way around. She knows that her not dying will mean that the rain will not come and that her whole village will die, but she can’t bring herself to part from Osinda. The fact that she feels that her life would be incomplete without marriage makes her less of a “new woman.” Oganda says,
“But the curse is upon me, Osinda, I am no good for you any more. And moreover the eyes of the ancestors will follow us everywhere and bad luck will befall us,” (Ogot, 389). She goes with him anyway and as they are leaving, she sees a lightning flash in the distance, and she knows that the rain has come. She has no idea what the future will hold, but she is just glad to be with Osinda, and to be alive. But, she can never return back to the village, for if the people knew she was al ive, they would lose respect for the supposed “lake monster” and for their society in general.
Her “old woman” characteristics shine through her actions and prove that she is not worthy of being called one of Kollontai’s “new women.”
Two different types o f women are characterized in the short stories “Two
Words,” and “The Rain Came.” Belisa is the ideal “new woman” as described by
Alexandra Kollontai. She is able to accept her situation, and when she realizes that she is not satisfied with it, she works to try and make it better. She is strong, independent and determined: she possesses all the attributes of a “new woman.”
She is the complete “heroine” and she even is able to save the Colonel. Oganda however, is the opposite. She is the “wife who was the shadow of the husband, a supplement, an appendage.” She is not the heroine doing the saving, instead she is the one being saved by the man. Her personality isn’t the same as that of
Belisa and we truly see the magnitude of this throughout the story. Throughout literature we see all different kinds of characters, and that plays a significant role in the significance of the story and how it pans out.