SOURCE: Hernandez, Librada. “El No de Las Niñas: Subversive Female Roles in Three of La Avellaneda's Comedias.” Hispanic Journal 12, no. 1 (spring 1991): 27-45.

In the following excerpt, Hernandez asserts that Avellaneda wrote didactic and subversive comedies to criticize representations of women in society and the theater.

The appearance of a successful woman playwright in the Madrid theater of the mid nineteenth century is an odd occurrence since the stage had been dominated by male writers. Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda represents a unique case in Spanish as well as in European literary history for the women that had acquired recognition at this time had been mainly novelists and poets. Triumph was not easy for La Avellaneda because she was subjected to severe criticism by her reviewers.¹ Her success is attested, however, by the public reception of her plays, and it is validated by the fact that while she...