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
When a Woman Sins many American films of the time, "When a Woman Sins" was subject to cuts by city and state film censorship boards. For example, the Chicago Board of Censors required cuts, in Reel 1, of pictures of a young woman in pajamas, Reel 2, old man kissing nurse on shoulder, Reel 5, the intertitle "I am for sale to the highest bidder", and to insert a new intertitle to the effect that the woman will marry the man who bids the most. "When a Woman Sins" is now considered to be a lost film. When a Woman Sins When a Woman