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
Women's rights in 2014 In August, Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani won the Fields Medal for mathematics, the first woman to do so. Maj. Mariam al-Mansouri, the first female fighter pilot in the United Arab Emirates, led a mission in October against ISIS targets in Syria, though she became the target of sexist remarks in some American media. Malala Yousafzai, a 17-year-old Pakistani woman who was shot by the Taliban for her efforts to secure education for girls, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in December. Yousafzai is the youngest person ever to receive the award. Women's rights in 2014 2014 was described as a watershed