An actual dialogue, one of understanding, is possible only between equals, but since woman in the early texts is denied a voice and thus identity and equality, true dialogue and communication are seen as impossible. There is, however, a development from an essentially failed dialogue in the early stories, through the slow emergence in the subsequent ones of woman's voice and self-awareness, on to hope and the possibility of a true encounter, a duet, in the late works.⁶

A brief summary of the author's views on women, marriage and language should contribute to a better understanding of her texts. In the patriarchal world⁷ she sees woman as a myth, the incarnation of some antagonistic principle, feared and either elevated and adored as a deity or reduced to impotence and domesticity to become, on the ethical plane, the self-abnegating “hada del hogar.”⁸ She is entrapped in what Julia Kristeva calls a “sacrificial contract” (“Women's Time” 25) and what René Girard sees as a sacrificial status because of her weakness and relatively marginal position (141-142).

In this liminal state, women have no being and no voice outside of marriage; they acquire a name, social standing and property only through their husbands (Franco 135-136; Fiscal, La imagen 149; Carretero 53); marriage and motherhood become the ultimate goals to which they aspire.⁹ Castellanos calls for a change to this situation not only for the sake of women but also because husbands are after all not “el milagro de San Antonio, ni el monstruo de la laguna negra.” They are human beings “a quienes nuestra inferioridad les perjudica tanto o más que a nosotras, para quienes nuestra ignorancia o irresponsabilidad es un lastre que los hunde” (“La participación de la mujer …” Mujer que sabe latín 40). She suggests as a remedy that we have to learn to practice one of the easiest and at the same time hardest lessons, “la de considerar que el otro no es una presa ni el cobrador de tributos, sino un yo con su propio centro de gravedad.” (“El amor en S. de Beauvoir.” Juicios sumarios 284).

Equality in dialogue, however, is difficult to achieve; for Castellanos language is an instrument of dominance and power.¹⁰ Whenever the dominated are not spoken with but only spoken to, they are reduced to silence and are denied equality and identity. Very much in the sense of Bakhtin, she writes:

El sentido de la palabra es su destinatario: el otro que escucha, que entiende y que, cuando responde, convierte a su interlocutor en el que escucha y el que entiende, estableciendo así la relación del diálogo que sólo es posible entre quienes se consideran y se tratan como iguales y que sólo es fructífero entre quienes se quieren libres.

(“Notas al margen: el lenguaje como instrumento de dominio.” Mujer que sabe latín 180.)

Women, being oppressed and dominated, often are silenced or reduced to a “whispering voice.”¹¹ Such women are frequently portrayed by Castellanos. It is precisely to give them a voice, to show them their right to use language that she writes (Fiscal, “Identidad y Lenguaje” 25, 28, 33; Lindstrom, “Women's Expression” 71, 73). What is needed is “formar conciencia, despertar el espíritu crítico, difundirlo, contagiarlo” (“La participación de la mujer …,” Mujer que sabe latín 40).¹²

The first collection of short stories, Ciudad Real (1960) centers around the plight of the indios in the town of San Cristóbal de las Casas and presents the theme of marriage only incidentally. Two of the stories, however, give the stereotyped Mexican paternalistic view of the position of women in a marriage. In neither of these stories are the couples shown as speaking to each other; dialogue is not even attempted and would be impossible because of woman's lack of identity and equality. In “Modesta Gómez” the heroine is taken into the home of the wealthy Ochoa family to take care of their youngest son, Jorgito; later she is raped by him and bears him an illegitimate child. Disgraced, she is thrown out of the house by his mother and later marries Alberto Gómez. Modesta accepts her husband's drinking and the physical abuse he inflicts on her and the children, because, “Alberto le había dado su nombre y sus hijos legítimos, la había hecho una señora” (70). The overtones of the word “señora” are obvious; not only does it characterize her as a respected married woman, but it also gives the servant girl the status of the mistress of the house. Identity, social standing and fulfillment as a mother are derived from a man.

On the other hand, “Advenimiento del Aguila” presents the man's reasons for wanting to get married: “La esposa que ha de proporcionarle holgura y respeto … bueno. Puede ser esta o la otra. A oscuras todas las hembras son iguales. Héctor cumpliría sus deberes como marido preñándola anualmente. Entre los embarazos y la crianza de los hijos, ella se mantendría tranquila en su rincón” (71). Quite clearly he sees the woman as an object of convenience, and literally relegates her to obscurity.

In the next collection, Los convidados de agosto (1964), the author's concern focuses on the plight of women mired in the oppressive traditions and prejudices of a middle class provincial society (Ocampo 205; González 107; Rosas 235). In these stories women speak, but their voices are solitary; they are not heard by men, or, if they are heard, they are not admitted into a dialogue. Thus marriage does not present opportunities for dialogue because it still functions as the traditional mode of two separate discourses playing out a ritualized encounter of social necessity. In “Las amistades efímeras” marriage serves to repair a breach in honor. The two main characters, female friends, are contrasted; Gertrudis creates her life through acts that seem unreasoned, born out of instinct and boredom; the other figure, an unnamed narrator, creates herself and her world through words: “No tenía la menor idea de lo que era ni de lo que iba a ser y me urgía organizarme y formularme, antes que con actos, por medio de las palabras” (11).¹³ She discovers her vocation by writing Gertrudis long letters about Oscar, thereby using language as an act of creation, describing, “inventing,” Oscar as one would a character for a work of fiction. Ironically, Gertrudis, who was planning to marry Oscar, has no major interest in these letters, and her replies are merely short answers. She also corresponds with Oscar but finds the exchange extremely boring, no doubt because they both use a form-book for letters, the Epistolario de los enamorados, which allows no spontaneity, no real communication.

The subtext of the story reveals an interesting dialogue between texts, a formalistic exercise pointing to a ritualistic encounter, devoid of real meaning. For both Gertrudis and Oscar, it is a stylized contact that uses language as a mask or a screen behind which the reality of life is hidden. With the inclusion of the Epistolario, Castellanos creates an intertextual¹⁴ referent that serves as a sign for the lack of dialogue. This narrative technique will become more and more prominent in her texts, as she provides an increasingly more complex and richer tapestry for the reader to unravel.

In “Las amistades efímeras” marriage is the consequence of an impulsive act of Gertrudis. Out of boredom she runs away with a total stranger, who is then forced by her outraged father to marry her so that her honor will be restored. Gertrudis herself has no voice in the decision, a fact she accepts as part of a woman's life. Later she submits just as naturally to the end of the marriage, when the man decides to marry his childhood sweetheart after he is released from prison. Yet she is not a helpless being; she creates her life through her acts. It is the same kind of creation that her friend, the narrator, has to achieve through words, an act she finds most difficult: “Y yo que estaba construyendo mi vida alrededor de la memoria humana y de la eternidad de las palabras. … Quise escribir y no pude. Para qué? Es tan difícil! Tal vez, me repetía yo con la cabeza entre las manos, tal vez sea más sencillo vivir” (29). The text remains open ended (Ahern, Reader 34) as in many of Castellanos's stories inviting the reader into a dialogue and the creative weaving of this feminine script.

Marriage as a sign of the predominance of the paternalistic world also underlies “El viudo Román.” Even though it is the desire and aspiration of all the young girls of Comitán, marriage is the exclusive decision of men. When it comes to asking for the hand of the bride, she is excluded from the formality (161). She is made mute, denied a voice, but is an acquiescing victim, who achieves personhood only through this act of sacrifice. Marriage will initiate her into the mysteries of life but at the same time allow her to remain comfortably child-like, hiding behind her husband to avoid responsibility and to assume a mature identity (166). She will see herself only through the eyes of the other, and the ritualized language allowed her assures the supremacy of that other, who conspires to take initiative away from her.

Even the wedding night is composed of ritualized acts, performed by two beings absorbed not in each other but only in themselves and without voice—the contact of the bodies produces no dialogue (172). The next morning, too, there is no verbal communication between the spouses. Romelia is informed by the maid of her husband's wishes that she get ready to go out, and then she is told by him that they are going to her parents' house. Obediently, she silently follows him, without the right to question him, only to find out that she is being returned to her parents' home accused of not having been a virgin. Using the only language available to her, that of her body, she offers irrefutable proof of her innocence: the bloodstain on the sheet.¹⁵ But her language is not accepted, her text is not even looked at. Only the male discourse is heard, carrying the weight of importance and apparent truth: “Don Carlos ha dado su palabra de honor, y es un hombre de honor. Tengo la obligación de creerle” (178). Romelia's discourse is not answered; she is not permitted to participate in the dialogue by husband or father; she is merely issued orders to leave the room to allow the dialogue between the males. Women, as the oppressed, function as “receptors of commands” (MacDonald 58) so that communication is rendered almost impossible (Schlau 47).

Ironically, as the reader finds out at the end of the story, the word of the so-called man of honor turns out to be a vicious falsehood. Through his confession to his friend, Father Evaristo Trejo, it becomes clear that all this was simply a trick to get the locket that Romelia always wore around her neck; it contained a piece of writing of her dead brother, whom don Carlos suspected of having been the lover of his first wife. The deceit was achieved through a total subversion of language, from his conversations with don Evaristo arranging the marriage, to the nuptial vows, and finally to confession, not to obtain absolution but to be able to brag about his deed to somebody who could not reveal what he heard.

The story “Tres nudos en la red” (1961) serves as an interesting bridge between the earlier stories of provincial Chiapas and the later ones situated in urban Mexico (Ahern, Reader 36; see also Franco 30). It is also a link to the slowly emerging voice of woman in dialogue and her self-realization, seen through the image of marriage.

The three persons caught in a marriage/family web are separated by the traditional set of values that dominated provincial society, as well as by their own inability to transcend their isolation. The net of the text is woven by the omniscient narrator's discourse and the dialogues of the characters, who are “knots” but also weavers of the web that enmeshes the other. The slow tearing apart of the marriage of wealthy Esteban Sanromán and Juliana, who comes from a lower class, is seen through their nightly discussions, which are mainly recurring disputes about the strangeness of their daughter, Agueda, and the alleged unfaithfulness of Sanromán. They poison the girl with feelings of guilt and worthlessness as she listens to them in the next room. The voices that tear at each other are characterized by Agueda in terms of sexual body imagery. Her father's voice, “maciza como su cuerpo, solemne como sus pasos, certera como la aguda punta del bastón de caoba que acertaba siempre con el sitio exacto donde posarse” (6). Her mother's voice, on the contrary, is heard as “una catarata irreflexiva” (6)¹⁶ which soon ends in silence, motivated not by fear or reasonableness but by the terror of reconciliation, that is, the fear of sex. The attempt at dialogue in this marriage is thus based on rancor and hostility. Even during meals the verbal exchanges are nothing but the prescribed rituals of polite discourse filled with sarcasm. Eventually the household falls into silence: “Ninguno tenía nada que compartir con nadie” (8). Each is caught in his/her own psychological landscape of self absorption; the negatives “ninguno,” “nada,” “nadie” emphasize the total isolation and disregard of the other and parallel the three knots or voices of the text.

Their wealth gone because of the distribution of the land, the family moves to the capital. As all the props of Esteban's power fall away, money becomes the only intrument of dominance. The marital dialogue now reduces itself to a verbal battle of humiliation for Juliana as she is subjected to interrogation about every cent that she needs for the household. The exchanges are those of master and servant; Juliana is clearly reduced to the powerlessness of a domestic. The reader's reaction to these exchanges is expressed by Agueda as, “Avaricia, abyección. Era esto el matrimonio?” (8) As the net of these discourses forms and molds the girl, she tries to escape and renounce any connection with her parents, in turn liberating her mother as well.

The other part of the net still holds Juliana and closes in even more restrictively when Esteban is diagnosed with possible angina. Her solicitude, nevertheless, ends when she discovers that her husband sees all her efforts as his due. His attitude triggers the ultimate liberation of Juliana who begins to go out increasingly more often and finally leaves for what she calls a needed vacation. In their last dialogue, it is her husband who is left totally speechless. The irony of Juliana's flight becomes poignant when the reader discovers that the cab, instead of taking her to a vacation, takes her to the Cancer Institute where she checks into the ward for incurable cases.¹⁷ She has been driven into final silence since she could not confide her illness to either husband or daughter. There is an ironic reversal of roles between the spouses; here the husband is reduced to the unproductiveness, immobility and silence usually assigned to the woman in the home, whereas now it is the woman who takes on the active role and leaves, consciously electing silence. Leaving provides Juliana with the only opportunity to become her own person, albeit only in death, the ultimate metaphor for the lack of dialogue.

The three knots of this text, represented by the three characters, are paralleled by the three locations of Juliana's life: the provincial city, the capital and eventually the cancer ward, and by the three dialogical exchanges between the spouses, characterized by a lack of love and understanding. The three characters caught in the web struggle to disentangle themselves but it is only the women who succeed to a certain extent.

In the final collection of short stories, Album de familia (1971), marriage is again used to show woman's dependence, powerlessness and lack of identity. Here the author portrays in the main the world of women living in an urban society and uses a style devoid of her earlier “patetismo,” filled with humor (“Satisfacción no pedida,” El uso de la palabra 211). It is stylistically the most interesting and complex collection, in which the metaphor of marriage becomes the leading figure of the author's search for meaningful dialogue.

From the dialogical point of view, there is a structural counterpoint between the four stories that comprise this collection. The first, “Lección de cocina,” and the third, “Cabecita blanca,” are linked by a reference to cooking recipes. But if in the first the new bride's inability to understand the text of the cookbook she is trying to read¹⁸ is a sign of the dissatisfaction she feels with her marriage and the traditional status quo, in the other, there is only the photograph of a very elaborate dessert that represents the static, paternalistic views of marriage held by the old widow. The second story, “Domingo” introduces a sophisticated, modern marriage, in which both partners feel free to go their separate ways. For the woman, however, this marriage is kept for convenience and status, and art seems the only possible escape from it. The art here is painting, as opposed to writing for the narrator in “Las amistades efímeras,” and it is equally problematic. The dialogues however show the protagonist and the men that come to her open house on Sundays in conversations between equals. Structurally connected is the fourth story, “Album de familia,” in which marriage plays only a tangential role; the text however is composed of conversations between women that in the end produce true dialogues of understanding. This demonstrates a marked progression toward the possibility of more meaningful human relationships.

In “Lección de cocina” Castellanos's best example of “an intrinsically feminine discourse” (Ahern, Reader 36; see also Fiscal, La imagen 69) she explores her feminist concerns through images of life as a text—the cookbook recipe as a sign for the recipe of a successful marriage. Here she uses feminine metaphors and the traditional scene of kitchen and honeymoon to transmit a radical message so that these become signs of “repression, annihilation, ruin” (Ahern, Reader 38; see also Lindstrom, “Rosario Castellanos: Pioneer” 72; González 112). The irony of the discourse, the disproportion between the end, the search for authenticity, and the means, the piece of meat, is what produces the humor the author alludes to (“Satisfacción no pedida,” El uso de la palabra 213). Just as the meat was cooked and burned because of the failure of the inexperienced cook to understand the language of the cooking manual, so the marital relationship is also going to fail because the new bride does not understand and is not willing to accept the prescriptions of society's recipe for a good marriage. The text of the cookbook as the sign of marriage according to old Mexican recipes is here deconstructed through feminist, dialogic, intertextual means.

It is written in the first person, as an apparent interior monologue.¹⁹ Interspersed throughout the text are literary allusions as signposts for the understanding of the sub-text of the narrative, subverting the apparently simple domestic task. The first such allusion appears in the cookbook itself, deconstructing its homely, culinary simplicity and signaling the impossible quest of the narrator: “Abro un libro al azar y leo: ‘La cena de don Quijote.’ Muy literario pero muy insatisfactorio.” (Album de familia 8). The incongruity of this intertextual referent signals the incongruity of the life of the narrator, as a modern, intellectual woman trying to read the text of a traditional Mexican marriage.

The allusions to Romeo and Juliet and to “Rapunzel,” function as signs of a fated relationship and the failure of the narrator's marriage, whereas the allusion to The Thousand And One Nights and to Casanova express the sexual frustrations of this union (16). The failure of dialogue with her husband is also seen in terms of a comparison between his body that covers her during their moments of love and a tombstone covered with inscriptions of strange names (14). It is in fact the reading of texts that constitute the narrator's life: “De soltera leía a escondidas. Sudando de emoción y de vergüenza. Nunca me enteré de nada” (16). She, however, also subverts the text that the reader is decoding: “Ah, no, no voy a caer en esa trampa: la del personaje inventado y el narrador inventado y la anécdota inventada. Además, no es la consecuencia que se deriva lícitamente del episodio de la carne” (20). And it is precisely through her dialogue within this text that insight is gained: “Yo seré, de hoy en adelante, lo que elija en este momento” (21), even though neither of the options that tradition leaves open are acceptable to her.

To these literary allusions is added another intertextual referent, that of a movie script: “Y un día tú y yo seremos una pareja de amantes perfectos y entonces, en la mitad de un abrazo, nos desvaneceremos y aparecerá en la pantalla la palabra ‘fin’” (17). The reference to a perfect loving relationship is, of course, only an illusion, and for her “next movie” the narrator would like to be assigned another role.

The final literary allusion, Ludwig Pfandl's characterization of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz as belonging to the class of “neuróticos cavilosos” (Die zehnte Muse 117), which the narrator applies to herself, signals the open ended text which Francescato considers its great merit (117). The intertextual web of cookbook, literary allusions, and the dialogic voice of the narrator allow the reader creative opportunities and mediate the understanding that the final text of the life of a modern Mexican woman has not yet been written.

In the story, “Domingo” we have a continuation of this search for authenticity and identity. Marriage here is not an imposed trap but a consciously accepted arrangement; yet it still does not offer a satisfying dialogue. Painting, to which Edith, the protagonist, was introduced by her lover, opened for her a means of self-expression, a meaningful, creative activity, that allows her to authenticate herself. The moments in her little studio, in front of her easel, are the moments she lives for; Sundays, when she has to attend to her traditional role of wife, mother and hostess, are seen as an invasion of her own life.

On the other hand there is also a marked progression from the dialogic point of view. In “Lección de cocina” the narrator's is the only voice-texture used; in “Domingo” one layer of the text is achieved by a web of dialogues between the various participants. It is the banter of social verbal games in which no other female voice but Edith's is heard and in which she shares as an equal. She is also a fully participating partner in the private dialogues with Octavio and Vicente in which, on a somewhat deeper level, relationships are explored. The linguistic web is loose and unbinding, just as the web that holds the relationships of these people together is slack and mostly unsatisfying. Edith, as the center of this game of social dialogues, exemplifies a new woman. Yet she has not achieved a station outside the home. Her individuality is still linked there; painting, as her means of escape, is perhaps only a temporary hobby.²⁰ The narrative is again open ended, an unfinished female text: “Los domingos son mortales. Pero luego viene el lunes y …” (“Domingo” 46).

As a counterpoint to the relative awareness of the women in the two previous stories, “Cabecita blanca” presents with biting irony the total ignorance of the Señora Justina. The picture of a fancy dessert which introduces the narrative represents traditional married life (47): a static text signaling the status quo. The ideal married woman practices the virtue of prudence, understood to mean “el silencio, el asentimiento, la sumisión,” (53) and, ironically, the ideal married man belongs in his place, that is at work, at the bar, at the house of his lover, or, as Señora Justina says, in the grave (49). We witness a total disfunction of dialogue and of understanding between the sexes. The irony of Señora Justina's image is that she is not aware of her own situation, which would become a hell were she to perceive it (Castellanos, “Satisfacción no pedida.” El uso de la palabra 215; Francescato 118). The language used here is that of the old text and is the one rejected by the bride looking for a new one.

Elvira, who never had a coherent dialogue with her husband until after their divorce, relates marriage and dialogue in the last story, “Album de familia,” with an allusion to Oscar Wilde: “El único que ha creído que el matrimonio es una asociación de ideas o una larga conversación … fue Oscar Wilde. Y no” (132). The importance of this parallel is made emphatic by the fact that the narrative is a web of dialogues between women which results in a sense of self-awareness, similar to that experienced by the narrator of “Lección de cocina” (Gómez Parham, 7). The open-ended text here signals the hope for meaning and understanding embodied in the loyalties and support found in a sisterhood of women.

Throughout the stories of Rosario Castellanos, there is then a gradual development of self-awareness in the women. The dialogue of marriage becomes the means through which the reader is made cognizant of the emergence of woman's participatory voice. Marriage also becomes a sign for the limitations of language and the difficulty of the different voices in the text to achieve true harmony and communication with the other. This progression reflects no doubt the author's hope for a development in society that would allow more meaningful relationships: “… a hacer de las mujeres colaboradoras eficaces de los hombres en la construcción de un mundo nuevo, luminoso, habitable para aquellos en quienes lo mejor de la humanidad se manifiesta; …” (“Mujer liberada—Woolf o la literatura como ejercicio de la libertad,” Juicios sumarios, 346). Dialogism provides a key to the understanding of Castellanos's short stories and marks the increase in their sophistication. A similar methodology could draw significant conclusions from the novels. The readings offered here provide a clearer insight into her preoccupation with language and writing as a means for women's self-actualization. Thus we are able to share her realization that the definitive text of this self-awareness and of the dialogue of mutual understanding still remains to be written.

Notes

1. By Yolanda Rosas. It is beyond the scope of this paper to give a complete bibliography of critical studies on Rosario Castellanos. From the Works Cited, the interested reader might find Ahern, Homenaje and Reader especially helpful. They provide excellent bibliographies and critical articles; the latter also has an anthology of Castellanos's works in English.

2. For Bakhtin dialogism is the “characteristic epistemological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia,” which is the “base condition governing the operation of meaning in any utterance.” (“Glossary,” The Dialogic Imagination 426, 428)

3. Elementary Structures 496. See also his assertion that marriage regulations are a kind of language that establishes communication between groups (Structural Anthropology 61).

4. It is related perhaps to her indebtedness to the existentialist philosophies of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and the views of Simone Weil (Gómez Parham, “Intellectual Influences …” 36-37, 38).

5. Even though Bakhtin's theory of dialogism is intimately connected with his analysis of the novel, it is my contention that some of the characteristics mentioned by him (Discourse 262-263) can be found in Rosario Castellanos's short stories. See also Maranhâo 13.

6. Nahum Megged maintains that there are no dialogues in Castellanos's works (in Gómez Parham 39, note 8); whereas Fiscal asserts that she at least believes in the possibility of a dialogue between the sexes (“La mujer en …” 151, 153).

7. Sociological studies have concluded that patriarchal structure traditionally characterized the Latin American family at all levels. Woman's place was in the home, and she had to defer to her husband in all matters not relating to the home (Nash and Ichen Safa 25). In Mexico even though legislation forbidding discrimination has been in effect for most of the century, this has still not eliminated the problem. Women were seen as “an object within the culture of consumption.” (González-Salazar 184; see also Palley 42; Fiscal, “La mujer” 152-153) just as in primitive culture, as Lévi-Strauss points out, woman was both object and means of binding society together (Elementary Structures 496).

8. The term was borrowed from Virginia Woolf (“Virginia Woolf o la literatura como ejercicio de la libertad.” Juicios sumarios 341; see also “El amor en Simone de Beauvoir.” Juicios sumarios 272-273; and “La mujer y su imagen.” Mujer que sabe latín 7-8).

9. The word matrimonium signifies “legal status of the mater,” and is the outcome of two different orientations in the male and female. For the man marriage is derived from a verb and is an act, for the woman it derives from a noun and is a destination, a function—reproductive receptivity to the male who gives her and her offspring identity (Kintz 16-17). See also the ironic description of Castellanos's own reasons for marriage and her way to achieve it (“Génesis de una embajadora.” El uso de la palabra 206; see also “Hora de la verdad.” El uso de la palabra 241; and in the same collection, “El hombre del destino” 191-194).

10. Spanish used by the conquering Spaniards to reduce the diversity of Indian dialects, constituted a privilege and expressed, like religion and race, rank. It was not however, according to Castellanos, created as a means of communication but as an object of ornament, and so ambiguity and miscommunication were inherent in it (“Divagación sobre el idioma.” El uso de la palabra 155).

11. Ahern, Reader 43, points to Rosario Castellanos's pioneering perception of the “silences in women's experiences,” especially in her essay on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz which is contemporary with Tillie Olsen's classic study. See also the definition of woman as a tabula rasa, and woman seen as an art object, experiencing her own body as the only available medium for her creativity (Gubar 74, 78, 79, 89); as well as the comparison between the literary text and the texture of the woven cloth (Kamenszain 77).

12. To name is to change and literature presents the possibility to transform the world, to change the structures of society that are unjust (See also Fiscal, La imagen 96; Anderson 31, Ahern, Reader 50). Women have to become conscious of their situation, they have to arrive at self-definition and construct their own image, “to write themselves”: “Hay que inventarnos” (Castellanos, El eterno femenino 194).

13. Here Rosario Castellanos practices woman writing herself, écriture feminine, years before the leading French feminists, Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva published their seminal works (Ahern, Reader xv, 51).

14. The term “intertextuality” was introduced by Julia Kristeva in her presentation of Bakhtin and defined in La Révolution du langage poétique (Roudiez, Introduction 15). Todorov uses it to refer to Bakhtin's dialogism, and reserves the term dialogical for specific instances of intertextuality, such as an exchange of responses by two speakers (Todorov 60). For the specific purposes of this paper, the definition of Michael Riffaterre will be helpful: “Intertextuality is that form of reference experienced when the reader finds that a text presupposes another and that the latter provides the former with the means of interpreting it and of justifying its formal and semantic peculiarities …” (2). Intertextuality seems to be particularly important to women writers and critics at this moment, (Moira Monteith 5; see Ahern, Reader 24 for intertextuality in Castellanos).

15. See Gubar 77, 78 and her reference to woman as text and artifact, the use of blood as a metaphor of creativity and “wounding” at the same time. See also Ahern, Reader 51 in reference to Castellanos's predilection for female body metaphors and her connection with Hélène Cixous's call “Write your self. Your body must be heard” (“The Laugh of the Medusa” 880).

16. See Palley 38, 39 and his reference to Irigaray and Lacan who relate “fluidity” of speech to woman and solid, phallic elements to man. See also Showalter, “Feminist Criticism” 16, 17 on biological theories of women's writing; Gubar, “The Blank Page” 75-78; and Kitch 3 on differences between male and female style.

17. Elena Poniatowska sees the figure of Juliana based on Rosario Castellanos's mother, who died of stomach cancer (120).

18. Bakhtin considers the image of the fool, of one not understanding, “of not grasping the conventions of society … almost everywhere an essential ingredient of prose style” (402). For him such incomprehension is a dialogic category and is always implicated in language. And as for the young bride here, it shows, “a polemical failure to understand someone else's discourse, someone else's pathos-charged lie that has appropriated the word and aspires to conceptualize it, a polemical failure to understand generally accepted, canonized, inveterately false languages with their lofty labels for things and events …” (403).

19. In Bakhtin's terms there is really no monologue because every discourse is by its very nature “dialogical.” A monologue is a solitary conversation with oneself, in which “the self-consciousness of a solitary individual seeks support and more authoritative reading of its fate in its own self, …” (Bakhtin, 145). In this story the dialogical nature of the discourse becomes quite apparent in the narrator's emphatic direction toward two other narratees, a female reader whom she addresses with “usted” and her husband, addressed with “tú” (Ahern, Reader 37).

20. Whereas Francescato 118, sees her achieving an equilibrium in her process of betterment, Castellanos regards Edith as a frivolous and lazy person who will get bored even by art and who recognizes herself in her unfinished picture (“Satisfacción no pedida.” El uso de la palabra 214.) Gómez Parham 5-6, discovers a more positive attitude in this story based on the fact that Edith finds her work a compensation for the “failure of human relationships”; and on the views of the character Vicente about women. The allusions to Joyce's Ulysses and to the film The Battleship Potemkin, both revolutionary works in their different genres and used in connection with Vicente, present his persona as one in whom such progressive possibilites lie.

Works Cited

Abel, Elizabeth, ed. Writing and Sexual Difference. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982.

Ahern, Maureen and Mary Seale Vásquez, eds. Homenaje a Rosario Castellanos. Valencia: Albatros, 1980.

Ahern, Maureen, ed. A Rosario Castellanos Reader. Austin, Texas: U of Texas P, 1988.

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