Straitjacket

The straitjacket is the physical restraint ordered for Alice Gould after her confrontation with Samuel Alvar. Although Montserrat Castell later frees her, the episode remains more than a medical measure: Alice treats it as an insult that must be answered, then makes its use a public test of Alvar’s conduct as director.

The Restraint and Its Immediate Consequence

After a disagreeable interview in Alvar’s office, he ordered Alice put in a straitjacket. Montserrat Castell released her from it. Alice regarded the restraint as an injury that could not simply be forgotten; her thoughts after the incident included both winning the trust and sympathy of those around her and taking revenge on Alvar.

Raised Before the Doctors

At a later meeting, Alice addressed the director about his hostility toward her and brought up the order to restrain her. The episode provoked astonishment among those present. César Arellano forcefully questioned whether a patient under his care, and not yet diagnosed, had been put in a straitjacket. The restraint thus became a matter for the assembled doctors, not merely a private encounter between Alice and Alvar.

An Instrument of Conflict

Alice framed the incident as an extortion committed against her, while telling César not to be angry and insisting that she held no resentment toward Alvar. Her account gives the object a double role: it marks the coercive power Alvar exercised over her, yet also becomes evidence Alice can use to shape the room’s response and confront him. The gap between her declared lack of rancor and her earlier resolve to take revenge leaves the straitjacket at the center of a contest over who can define the incident—and what it says about the director.