SOURCE: "Magic Feminism in Isabel Allende's The Stories of Eva Luna," in Multicultural Literatures through Feminist/Poststructuralist Lenses, The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1993, pp. 103-36.

In the essay below, Hart examines what she terms "feminocentric magic realism" in The Stories of Eva Luna, focusing on Allende's handling of such issues as prostitution and rape.

Magic used to show the reader what equality between the sexes should be is a key technique employed by Isabel Allende in The Stories of Eva Luna. In the long tradition of magic realism in Latin American letters, the point has never been to hold up an exact mirror to reality, but rather to reflect deeper truths about human nature, sociopolitical conditions, and mortality through what on the surface often appear flamboyant, contradictory, or impossible events. That is exactly what Allende does in this book with such major feminist concerns as prostitution, child...