In Lispector’s ‘Hour of the Star’ (1977) and Porter’s ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’ (1939) the psychological effect of modernity is portrayed in a variety of similar and contrasting ways. Through a plethora of literary techniques both authors highlight how their respective protagonists are affected by the process of modernity. This can be seen most prevalently by both protagonist’s deep sense of isolation and sense of ‘being out of place’. Both Lispector and Porter chose female protagonists for their respective novels and through this an interesting analysis can be made of the female experience of modernity and how both characters react to it. The stories of Macabéa and Miranda are very different but in some ways all too similar. Both are young women navigating their way through twentieth century life while enduring hardship and strife. They both work in an overtly patriarchal office setting and both are heavily influenced by the male love interest in their lives. Despite being set in different continents and set decades apart the struggles they face are similar and so is the psychological impact. Through this we see how the process of modernity happens across the world from Colorado to the Nordeste region of Brazil. The modern world seems to conspire against both women at every turn and only build them up so to let them drop from a greater height. The two tragic tales highlight a struggle against a world of which they feel disconnected from and fragmented.

The structure of both texts is interesting when analysing the psychological impact of modernity. Porter’s ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’ is set during the 1918 influenza epidemic that ravaged the post Great War world infecting up to 500 million people (then one third of the world’s population) and killing an estimated 50 million, 675,000 of whom were in the United States . To keep up morale during the final year of the war the extent of the outbreak was hidden by the government and the press leading to a general suppression of its representation in forms of media compared with the World Wars that occurred either side of it. It would have been likely that almost every person on the planet would have either been infected or have known someone who had been infected yet the trauma they experienced was buried deep. The wish of Porter to display her experiences of the epidemic where she herself was infected is clear to see in the structure of the text. Due to the ‘quasi-autobiographical’ (Cuiba, 55) nature of Miranda the use of pronouns is incredibly fluid with Porter regularly switching between ‘me’ and ‘I’ as well as ‘Miranda’. This highlights the psychological impact on Porter as she is attempting to highlight her horrific experiences of surviving influenza as well as having to live in silence for years a