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
A Married Woman part", greeted "The Married Woman" as a major artistic and intellectual work. In September however, the Commission de Controle (the censorship board) voted 13-5, with two abstentions, to ban the film. Objections centred on the title, which the board said implied all married women were adulterous, and on the film's devotion 'to the salacious illustration of scenes of sexuality.' The commission's reasons were not made public but were relayed to the minister of information, Alain Peyrefitte. He agreed to meet Godard and months of debate and negotiation followed. Godard believed the real problem was political and that 'The people of