Near to the Wild Heart opens with a scene of the child Joana playing in the garden, making up poems for her father. Joana's wildness and barely suppressed violence, along with her linguistic creativity, are her most notable features. She is frequently compared to animals: over the course of the book Lispector compares her to a bird, a snake, a wildcat, a horse, and a dog. She commits transgressive acts—as a child she throws a book at an old man's head, for example, and as a married woman she leaves her husband, Otávio, and greets the news of his adultery—he has made another woman, his
Daška McLean Daška McLean Daška Marija Ivanović-Banac Kennedy McLean (26 January 1915 – 2004) was a British woman of Serbian and Croatian descent who made headlines in Europe and America when she made her 18-year-old daughter a ward of the court in the U.K. after she eloped with her fiancé in 1957. Ivanović (pronounced "Ivanovich") was born in Osijek, Austria-Hungary (present-day Croatia) on 26 January 1915, the daughter of Dr. Ivan Rikard Ivanović, one of the founders of the National Progressive Party (NNS) and a deputy in Croatia's Sabor (Assembly), who had helped to form the state in 1918. Dr. Ivanović's parents