SOURCE: "Fuentes on Mexican Feminophobia," in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 8, No. 2, Summer, 1988, pp. 225-33.

In the following analysis of the story "Mother's Day, " Valdes describes how Fuentes portrays masculine characters who stereotype the females in their lives, allowing the women only one of two roles, that of the virgin mother or that of the whore. The critic concludes that Fuentes 's story effectively portrays the emptiness and violence that are related to these stereotypical views.

"Mother's Day" is a long short story (thirty-three pages) by Carlos Fuentes included in a collection of his short stories with the title Burnt Water translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. This short story focuses on the empirical and verisimilar reality of present-day Mexico City. What makes it a significant ideological text is its concentration on the Mexican male's "feminophobia." Although feminophobia is not in any way limited to Mexican society, it has...