Constructing new men and women: The search for modern gender roles in contemporary Latin American fiction

This thesis examines the "unwriting" and rewriting of gender roles in Latin American fiction in the late twentieth century. It considers four writers---Julio Cortazar, Rosario Castellanos, Carlos Fuentes, and Angeles Mastretta---whose work exemplifies a progression in thinking about gender and who sought to create "modern" male and female characters who would be self-determining, sexually liberated, active participants in their own destinies, and persons with an authentic basis for life and communication. I track the attempts of these authors to create such characters, starting with the Boom's employment of archetypal characters and their creation of antiheroes. I continue with a consideration of Rosario Castellanos's fiction and criticism and her insertion of the female speaking subject into national, historical, and literary discourses. I then explore the Post-Boom's rejection of archetypal theory and its successful development of liberated and authentic characters of the 1990's. I also consider these authors' rejection of the national romance as a vehicle for liberating men and women in their relationships to each other, and their eventual return to and rewriting of the national romance and of couplehood. Throughout the thesis, I approach gender as an internal, complex debate in Latin America and as such, I focus on the ways in which the texts of these four authors interact and dialogue with each other regarding men's and women's roles in society.