SOURCE: “Confronting Myths of Oppression: The Short Stories of Rosario Castellanos's ‘Chloe Furnival,’” in Knives and Angels: Women Writers in Latin America, edited by Susan Bassnett, Zed Books Ltd., 1990, pp. 52-67.

In the following essay, Furnival discusses the “bourgeois male ‘utopia’ that emerged from the Mexican Revolution,” explored by Castellanos in her short stories.

Rosario Castellanos (1925-74) was born into a white, wealthy landowning family in Mexico City and grew up on the family's estate in the southern, predominantly Indian-populated state of Chiapas. In 1941, President Cárdenas's land reforms¹ finally reached this traditionally closed-off state, dramatically scaling down the Castellanos family's land-ownership there and causing the family's migration to Mexico City. Rosario Castellanos studied philosophy at the national university in Mexico City, presenting her Masters thesis in 1950 entitled On Feminine Culture [‘Sobre cultura femenina’]. Later she returned to Chiapas (1956-57) and worked in San Cristóbal de las...