SOURCE: “Gender and Class Relations in De noche vienes,” in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Vol. 72, No. 1, January, 1995, pp. 111–21.

In the following essay, Shaw examines two themes prevalent in De noche vienes: the romantic relationships that women have with men and the relationships that women have with women of different social standing.

Elena Poniatowska is best known for her chronicles of political injustices suffered by Mexicans, and for her testimonial novel, Hasta no verte Jesús mío (1969), which provides a semi-fictional biography of a poor woman, struggling to survive in twentieth-century Mexico.¹ She is less known for her more obviously fictional work, and De noche vienes in particular has received scant critical attention, despite its literary quality and its concern with what in feminist terms are highly political themes.² In all her work she deconstructs the public/private dichotomy by examining the effects of power structures on people's...