SOURCE: Spencer, Laura Gutierrez. “Fairy Tales and Opera: The Fate of the Heroine in the Work of Sandra Cisneros.” In Speaking of the Other Self: American Women Writers, edited by Jeanne Campbell Reesman, pp. 278-87. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Spencer views “La Fabulosa: A Texas Operetta” as a retelling of the opera Carmen and asserts that by allowing her heroine to live, Cisneros is subverting the traditional fate of strong female protagonists in opera and fairy tales.

Take away the mantillas, the golden colors, the cigars—take away Egypt and the memory of Isis—and the tale you will hear is about any woman at all.

—Catherine Clément, Opera, or the Undoing of Women

Within the Western narrative tradition, female characters are commonly presented within the narrow confines of polarized roles limited to either madonna or whore, villain or victim. In...