Rosario Ferré Criticism
Rosario Ferré's literary oeuvre is characterized by its exploration of themes surrounding identity, power dynamics, and the experiences of women within patriarchal structures. Her major works, such as Sweet Diamond Dust and The House on the Lagoon, delve into these issues with a particular focus on the struggles of women and their resistance to societal expectations. Ferré frequently employs motifs such as dolls to symbolize these themes, as Carmen S. Rivera discusses in Porcelain Face / Rotten Flesh: The Doll in Papeles de Pandora. Beyond her fiction, Ferré has made significant contributions to feminist literary criticism through essays like those collected in Sitio a Eros, which Elena Gascón Vera examines here.
Despite her profound impact on Spanish-speaking audiences, Ferré's work has struggled to gain the same level of recognition among English-speaking readers. Her novel The House on the Lagoon, for example, integrates magical realism and historical narrative in a manner akin to Isabel Allende, as noted by Ellen G. Friedman in her review. Critics such as Patricia Hart and Ilan Stavans have praised Ferré's narrative skill and advocated for greater acknowledgment of her contributions to literature, with their reviews accessible through Hart and Stavans.
Ferré's stories consistently challenge stereotypes and examine the socio-economic forces shaping women's roles. In tales like "La muñeca menor," she critiques idealized femininity, as analyzed by Carmen S. Rivera in her essay. Additionally, Ferré addresses complex issues of class and sexual exploitation in Puerto Rican society in stories such as "When Women Love Men," which she elaborates on in her own essay, How I Wrote 'When Women Love Men'.
Although "When Women Love Men" initially sparked controversy, Ferré's work has gradually attained recognition, especially as it has been translated into English. Her incorporation of metafictional techniques and reimagined myths aligns her with the magical realist tradition, yet her distinctive focus on transforming societal perceptions of women offers a unique perspective. In The Writer's Kitchen, Ferré describes her writing as both a personal and intellectual pursuit, serving as a testament to her life and as a record of broader historical narratives. This commitment underscores the enduring relevance and complexity of her work.
Contents
- Principal Works
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Ferré, Rosario (Contemporary Literary Criticism)
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Foreword to Papeles de Pandora: The Youngest Doll
(summary)
In the following essay, Franco provides a brief thematic overview of the stories in Papeles de Pandora.
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El coloquio de las perras
(summary)
In the following review, Hintz addresses the principal purpose of El coloquio de las perras. Rosario Ferré's most recent book, El coloquio de las perras, is a collection of eight essays on the general topic of feminist literary criticism. The first essay, which lends the volume its title, is a fictional presentation of Ferré's personal opinions on feminist literary criticism. The second is a statement on the status of feminist literary criticism during the last decade. The remaining pieces are written autodiegetically as an explanation of Ferré's own feminist narrative.
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The Youngest Doll
(summary)
In the following review, Hart compares the narrative modes of The Youngest Doll and Sandra Cisneros's Woman Hollering Creek, highlighting the authors's thematic similarities.
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An interview with Rosario Ferré
(summary)
In the following interview, Rosario Ferré, in conversation with Donna Perry, discusses her literary work, emphasizing the role of her personal background, themes of race, class, and gender, the complexities of translating fiction, and her critique of Puerto Rican society, while reflecting on her journey as a Puerto Rican woman writer.
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Porcelain Face / Rotten Flesh: The Doll in Papeles de Pandora
(summary)
In the following essay, Rivera discusses various uses of the doll motif in the stories and poems of Papeles de Pandora, particularly as a means of defense against patriarchal elements for female characters.
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Rosario Ferré's ‘La muneca menor’ and Caribbean Myth
(summary)
In the following essay, Zee elucidates the references and allusions to indigenous Caribbean cultural and mythological traditions in “La muneca menor.”
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Sitio a Eros: The Liberated Eros of Rosario Ferré
(summary)
In the following essay, a revised version of a study published originally in Spanish in Gascón Vera's Un mito nuevo: La mujer como sujeto/objeto literario (Madrid: Editorial Pliegos, 1992) and translated by Joy Renjilian Burgy, Gascón Vera identifies Ferré's contributions to a feminine principle of passion as primarily expressed in Sitio a Eros.
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Blood of the Conquistadors
(summary)
In the following review, Ruta comments on the style, structure, and characterization of The House on the Lagoon.
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Pandora's Log: Charting the Evolving Literary Project of Rosario Ferré
(summary)
In the essay below, Skinner traces Ferré's literary development in her narrative works, focusing on her essay “La cocina de la escrita,” her short story “La muneca menor,” her novel Maldito amor, and her short story collection Las dos Venecias.
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Serving Two Masters
(summary)
In the following review, Stavans discusses The House on the Lagoon in the context of contemporary Puerto Rican literature, highlighting its less than enthusiastic reception by English-speaking readers.
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Constructing and Reconstructing
(summary)
In the following review of The House on the Lagoon, Grossman discusses the plot, major characters, and underlying message of the novel, concluding that “The House on the Lagoon gives us a performance of great accomplishment and wit, and the sense of a world held in measured but deeply affectionate memory.”
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A review of The House on the Lagoon
(summary)
In the following review, Friedman unfavorably compares The House on the Lagoon with Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits. The House on the Lagoon is an attempt at a Puerto Rican House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende's 1982 novel. Indeed, the narrator's name is Isabel. Set in Ponce and San Jose, the novel follows six generations of two families from the business aristocracy of Puerto Rico and even provides the reader with a family tree. The narrator's manuscript, which she keeps hidden, is discovered by her husband Quintin who then provides the novel with some self-reflexiveness. He comments on Isabel's style and her truthfulness, offers other versions of the events, and rationalizes the misdeeds of his relatives as related in the manuscript. But because his critiques are not given much space or, for that matter, much intelligence, they are an irritation. They offer neither an alternate view nor reveal a facet of Quintin that is not available from Isabel.
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Text and Countertext in Rosario Ferré's ‘Sleeping Beauty’
(summary)
In the following essay, Glenn concentrates on the form and structure of 'Sleeping Beauty,' highlighting the function of its fragmented narrative and the play between texts and countertexts from a variety of media that inform the story.
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The House on the Lagoon
(summary)
In the following review, Stavans characterizes The House on the Lagoon in the magic realism mode of Latin-American literature, but also praises Ferré's efforts to make her fictional world accessible to English-speaking readers. This essay is a slightly revised version of Stavans' review in Nation (20 November 1995).
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Family History
(summary)
In the following review, Childress offers qualified praise for Eccentric Neighborhoods, admiring the tone and style of the novel but faulting the characterization and the quantity of individual story lines.
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Foreword to Papeles de Pandora: The Youngest Doll
(summary)
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Ferré, Rosario (Short Story Criticism)
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Power and the Text: Rebellion in Rosario Ferré's Papales de Pandora
(summary)
In the following essay, Vélez details the narrative structure of Ferré's story 'Sleeping Beauty' to demonstrate how the protagonist undermines patriarchal authority, a recurring theme in Ferré's short fiction.
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The Writer's Kitchen
(summary)
In the following essay, adapted by the author from a speech, Ferré discusses her personal motivations for writing fiction. Ferré states: "Writing is for me above all a physical knowledge, an irrefutable proof that my human form — individual and collective — exists. But writing is also an intellectual knowledge, the discovery of a form that precedes me. It is only through pleasure that we can encode the testimony of the particular in the experience of the general, as a record of our history and our time."
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How I Wrote 'When Women Love Men'
(summary)
In the brief essay that follows, Ferré details her rationale for the story "When Women Love Men." The author asserts "'When Women Love Men,' in short, is a story which points to specific social problems: the frigidity of women of the higher social class as well as the sexual exploitation of prostitutes are both a consequence of an unjust social hegemony in the hands of men."
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Porcelain Face/Rotten Flesh: The Doll in Papales de Pandora
(summary)
In the essay below, Rivera discusses the significance of the doll motif in Ferré's short story collection Papales de Pandora, concluding that "Ferré seems to warn her readers that when a woman's voice and sexuality is confined and 'gagged' by male oppression, she begins to rot and smell as decomposed flesh beneath the ever passive beauty of her porcelain face."
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Rosario Ferré's 'La muñeca menor' and Caribbean Myth
(summary)
In the following essay, Zee examines the abundant "indigenous cultural and mythological references and allusions" in Ferré's story "La muñeca menor."
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Text and Countertext in Rosario Ferré's 'Sleeping Beauty'
(summary)
Below, Glenn offers an informative analysis of Ferré's short story 'Sleeping Beauty,' focusing in particular on the author's methods for conveying her message of social oppression and its consequences.
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Power and the Text: Rebellion in Rosario Ferré's Papales de Pandora
(summary)
- Further Reading