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
LGBT rights in Croatia subsequently passed the "Life Partnership Act" on 15 July 2014. This law effectively made same-sex couples equal to heterosexual married couples in everything except adoption rights. An institution similar to step-child adoption called "partner-guardian" was created to deal with the care of children. In March 2014, it was announced that Croatia had granted asylum for the first time to a person persecuted on the basis of their sexual orientation – a young man from Uganda who had fled the country as a result of the Uganda Anti-homosexuality Act. The first life partnership in Croatia took place in Zagreb on September