SOURCE: Lindsay, Claire. “Re-Reading the Romance: Genre and Gender in Isabel Allende's ‘Niña perversa’.” Romance Studies 19, no. 2 (December 2001): 135-47.

In the following essay, Lindsay provides a socio-psychoanalytic reading of “Niña perversa” in order to examine Allende's use of romantic conventions in her fiction.

In an entry on ‘Bestsellers’ in the Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature, Deborah Shaw outlines a by now common criticism of the Chilean author Isabel Allende: ‘Her novels depend on the exploitation of the romantic myth for their power to move and intrigue her readership. Romantic love, as in most women's best sellers, is where ultimate happiness and fulfilment are to be found’.¹ Much of the current criticism of Allende's work hinges on this premise that the author exploits the romance genre in her best-selling novels such as La casa de los espíritus (1982) and Eva Luna (1988). Indeed, critics have also drawn attention...