SOURCE: "The Love Story: Reading the Writing in Jorge Isaacs's María," in The Lost Rib: Female Characters in the Spanish-American Novel, Bucknell University Press, 1985, pp. 19-37.

In the following excerpt, Magnarelli offers a feminist reading of Isaacs's María and analyzes the representation of the novel's title character. Published in 1867 by Jorge Isaacs (Colombia, 1837-95), Mara is one of the earliest Spanish-American novels still widely read today. Generally relished by adolescents, María has been successively highly esteemed and discredited because of its maudlin romanticism. Numerous critics have demonstrated its close affiliation with European romanticism, and many have considered it but a poor copy of French works such as Atala and Paul et Virginie.¹ Nevertheless, some of the most important aspects of the text, especially those related to the title female, have been neglected. In the following pages, I shall examine María in terms of the...