1. Teresa de la Parra, Tres conferencias (Bogotá: 1930).

2. Karen Offen, "Toward an Historical Definition of Feminism" (Paper presented for the Western Association of Women Historians, May, 1985); Francesca Miller, "Problems and Concerns of Women in Latin America: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives," Conference Group in Women's History Newsletter (Winter 1976).

3. De la Parra, Tres conferencias .

4. Francesca Miller, "The International Relations of Women of the Americas," The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History (Fall 1986): 174.

5. Asunción Lavrin, "The Ideology of Feminism in the Southern Cone, 1900-1940," Latin American Program Working Papers 169 (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center, Smithsonian Institution, 1986).

6. Congreso Femenino Internacional (Buenos Aires: 1910).

7. Teresa González Fanning, "Educación doméstica y social de la mujer," Congreso Femenino Internacional , 280.

8. Ibid.

9. J. María Samame, "La democracia y la personalidad política de la mujer," Congreso Femenino Internacional , 374.

10. "The Second Pan American Scientific Congress," Bulletin of the Pan American Union 45, 8 (December 1915): 762.

11. There is good reason for this ideological diversity, which within the Pan American Women's Central Committee in the 1920s ranged from Wilsonian democrat to Trotskyite. I suggest that it is inherently related to the historical development of a feminist critique of society in the American states. For example, María del Carmen Feijóo writes of the Argentine feminists, "Puede considerarse con certeza que es a partir de 1890 cuando se empiezan a desarrollar de manera sistemática los esfuerzos dirigidos al esclarecimiento de la cuestión femenina y los primeros intentos organizativos. En nuestro pais, son las anarquistas quienes se anticipan en las discusión sistemática del problema" ( La Vida de Nuestro Pueblo 9, Las Feministas [1982]: 7). See also K. Lynn Stoner, "From the House to the Streets: Women's Movement for Legal Change in Cuba, 1898-1958" (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1983); Shirlene Soto, The Mexican Woman: A Study of Her Participation in the Revolution , 1910-1940 (Palo continue

Alto, Calif.: R & E Research Associates, 1979); Alicia Moreau de Justo, El socialismo y la mujer (Buenos Aires: Editorial La Vanguardia, 1931).

12. "Delegates to the Pan American Conference of Women," Bulletin of the Pan American Union 54, 4 (April 1922): 350-351. See also "A Permanent Pan American Association of Women" (n.p., n.d.), Alice Park Collection, Archives of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University.

13. Bertha Lutz, Homenagem das Senhoras Brasileiras a Illustre Presidente da União Inter-Americana de Mulheres (Rio de Janeiro: 1926).

14. James Brown Scott, The International Conferences of American States, 1889-1928 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1931), vii.

15. Papers of the Comité de las Americas de la Liga Internacional de Mujeres de la Paz y Libertad, 1947, Archives of the Hoover Institution.

16. CIM Inter-American Commission of Women , 1928-1973 (Washington, D.C.: General Secretariat, Organization of American States, 1974), 1.

17. The Equal Rights Treaty was drafted by Alice Paul of the National Woman's Party of the United States and presented to the Havana Conference by Doris Stevens.

18. "Declaration of Lima in Favor of Women's Rights, 1938," CIM Inter-American Commission of Women , 1928-1973, ID.

19. Alice Park, 1928 diary, Alice Park Collection, Archives of the Hoover Institution.

20. Papers of the Comité de las Americas.

21. Scott, International Conferences , 507.

22. Ibid.

23. Uncollated MS, Doris Stevens Collection, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlessinger Archives of the History of Women, Radcliffe College.

24. Scott, International Conferences , 507.

25. Ibid.

26. "The Second Pan American Scientific Conference," Bulletin of the Pan American Union 45, (December 1915): 762.

27. Nelly Merino Carvallo, editorial, Mujeres de América 1, 5 (September-October 1933). ix. I am grateful to Gwen Kirkpatrick for providing me with a number of copies of this journal.

28. Three women were members of national delegations.

29. Scott, International Conferences , 507.

30. Pro Paz was organized by "asociaciones femeninas y estudantiles" in Argentina; the signatories of the petition included many men's and women's associations, as well as individuals. Ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. Mary Louise Pratt, "Women, Literature, and National Brotherhood," this volume. Pratt addresses the ideas put forth by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). Anderson proposes viewing the nation as "an imagined political community, imagined both as inherently limited and sovereign."

33. "Declaration of Lima," cited in CIM Inter-American Commission of Women 1928-1973 , 10.

34. The declaration was drawn up and presented by the Mexican delegation to continue

the Inter-American Commission of Women. Ward M. Morton, in his study, Woman Suffrage in Mexico (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1962), states that in anticipation of their victory in securing suffrage ''the jubilant [Mexican] feminist organizations urged the delegation to the Eighth Pan American Conference in 1938 to take advantage of Mexico's progress toward women's rights by submitting a declaration on the subject" (37). The Mexican women's hopes were to founder as Congress buried the amendment that would have given them suffrage; it was not secured until 1953.

35. Doris Stevens Collection, Radcliffe College.

36. Ibid.

37. Charter of the United Nations.

38. Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Continental Peace and Security, Petropolis, Brazil, 1947.

39. The Rio Treaty served as the blueprint for NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

40. Papers of the Primer Congreso Interamericano de Mujeres, 1947, Collection of Alicia Moreau de Justo, Montevideo, Uruguay. I am grateful to Janet Greenberg for providing this document.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. The reason the Guatemalan government particularly welcomed the women was in celebration of the overthrow of the Ubico dictatorship and establishment of civil liberties, including freedom of speech, under the administration of Juan José Arévalo. break

1. David Rock treats this period most succinctly in Politics in Argentina, 1890-1910: The Rise and Fall of Radicalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

2. On this topic, see Maxine Molyneux, "No God, No Boss, No Husband: Anarchist Feminism in Nineteenth Century Argentina," Latin American Perspectives 14, 1 (Winter 1986): 119-145. Asunción Lavrin also addresses some of the problems surrounding women in the anarchist movements in The Ideology of Feminism in the Southern Cone, 1900-1940, Latin American Program Working Papers 169 (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center, Smithsonian Institution, 1986).

3. On women's activism in this period, see Donna J. Guy, "Women, Peonage, continue

and Industrialization: Argentina, 1810-1914," Latin American Research Review 16, 3 (198I): 65-89.

4. The exaltation of the prostitute comes in part from anarcho-socialist protests over the white slave trade and the traffic of women. For a detailed discussion of this, see Molyneux, " No God ," 135.

5. On the social organization of women, see Sandra McGee Deutsch, Counterrevolution in Argentina, 1900-1932: The Argentine Patriotic League (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), especially chapters 1 and 2. On women's participation in labor, McGee states: "In 1914, females were 22% of the labor force over fourteen years of age. As many as 30% of all industrial and manual laborers were female, as were 52% of instructors and educators. And 84% of those providing personal services. . . . The fact that women tended to work longer hours under worse conditions for less pay than men led some of them to participate in the labor and feminist movements" (15).

6. On the feminist demands for democratic reform, see Cynthia Jeffress Little, "Education, Philanthropy, and Feminism: Components of Argentine Womanhood, 1860-1926," in Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives , ed. Asunción Lavrín (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), 235-253.

7. See Lila Sosa de Newton, Las argentinas de ayer a hoy (Buenos Aires: Zanetti, 1967), especially chapter 3.

8. On Pan-Americanism, see Francesca Miller, this volume. On women in Cuba, see Karen Lynn Stoner, "In Defense of Motherhood: Divorce Law in Cuba During the Early Republic," Journal of Third World Societies , 15 (March 1981): 1-32. On the women's movements demands for reform of the Argentine civic code, see Catalina Wainerman and Marysa Navarro, El trabajo de la mujer en la Argentina: Un análisis preliminar de las ideas dominantes en las primeras décadas del siglo XX , Cuadernos del CENEP 7 (Buenos Aires: CENEP, 1979), 111-114.

9. Even the socialist movement, though supportive of women's rights, clearly urged women to celebrate their roles as mothers and cherish the family nest.

10. In Argentina, for example, a Society of Beneficence was established in the early nineteenth century in which women were invited to participate actively in the administration of a public school system for girls and, later, in social welfare programs. Women were charged with the management of the society and the administration of programs. On this topic, see Cynthia Jeffress Little, "The Society of Beneficence in Buenos Aires, 1823-1900" (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1980).

11. On the hygiene movement and legal restrictions on women see Donna Guy, "Lower Class Families, Women, and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Argentina," Journal of Family History , 10, 3 (Autumn 1985): 318-322.

12. See, for example, the advice manuals printed by the Argentine Antonio Zamora through his publishing firm, Claridad. Although supposedly representing the interests of women, these manuals were clearly pornographic.

13. Even in the Pan-Americanist women's journal Mujeres de América , the column on health and hygiene advised women to serve their husbands. Beatriz Sarlo has commented on the representations of women's bodies in popular fiction in her El imperio de los sentimientos (Buenos Aires: Catálogos, 1985).

14. José Ingenieros. Tratado del amor , ed. Anibal Ponce (Buenos Aires: Ramón J. Roggero, 1950). break

15. Ricardo Rojas, La literatura argentina (Buenos Aires: Librería La Facultad, 1924), vol. 1.

16. Rojas, ''Los modernos," in La literatura argentina 7:767. See also his La restauración nacionalista: Informe sobre educación (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública, 1909), in which he describes the moral crisis of modern Argentina.

17. Manuel Gálvez, "La literatura argentina contemporánea," in La vida múltiple (Buenos Aires: Nosotros, 1916), 210-211.

18. "Protestamos," Inicial 1, 1 (1923): 5-6.

19. "Directrices: feminismo y democratización," Revista de Avance 3 (1929): 36.

20. See Stoner, "In Defense of Motherhood."

21. Elizabeth A. Kuznesof and Robert Oppenheimer, "The Family and Society in Nineteenth-Century Latin America: An Historiographical Introduction," Journal of Family History 10, 3 (Autumn 1985): 215-234.

22. See Ricardo Rodríguez Molas, "Sexo y matrimonio en la sociedad tradicional," Todo Es Historia 16, 187 (December 1982): 8-43.

23. Max Horkheimer, "Authority and the Family," in Critical Theory: Selected Essays , trans. Matthew J. O'Connell (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), 99.

24. I have also written about the evolution of the literary treatment of Manuela Rosas in "Nationalism and the Discourse on Gender" (Paper delivered at the Seventh Berkshire Conference on Women's History, Wellesley College, June 1987). On the representation of women in nineteenth-century Argentina, see my "Between Civilization and Barbarism: Women, Family and Literary Culture in Mid-Nineteenth Century Argentina," in Hernán Vidal, ed., Cultural and Historical Grounding for Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Feminist Literary Criticism (Minneapolis: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1989), 517-566.

25. Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York: Basic Books, 1977).

26. Manuel Gálvez, La maestra normal (Buenos Aires: Tor, n.d.).

27. See, for example, Oliverio Girondo, Espantapájaros , in Obras completas , ed. Enrique Molina (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1968), or Vicente Huidobro, Temblor del cielo , in Altazor/Temblor del cielo , ed. René de Costa (Madrid: Cátedra, 1981).

28. I have addressed this question in my Lenguaje e ideología: Las escuelas argentinas de vanguardia (Buenos Aires: Hachette, 1986).

29. See "Parnaso Satírico" in Martin Fierro magazine (Buenos Aires, 1924-1927), a page of limericks and expressions of mutual admiration by the avant-garde poets of the 1920s. Of interest also is the publication of poetry in a female voice about prostitutes involved in Argentine white slavery. This poetry, which poked fun at the travails of women of the streets, was authored by César Tiempo under the pseudnonym Clara Béter in a volume called Versos de una  . . . (1926). It inspired a series of critical discussions by Tiempo's male colleagues, who knew of the false authorship but preferred to express mock horror about the trade of prostitutes for the purpose of literary fun. For details of the controversy, see César Tiempo, Clara Béter y otras fatamorganas (Buenos Aires: Peña Lillo, 1974).

30. These critical discussions are generated from Freud's essay "The Family Romance," in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1959), 9: 237-241. Lacanian readers of literature have emphasized the missing father as the principal generator of fiction. See, for example, continue

Robert Con Davis, ed., The Fictional Father: Lacanian Readings of the Text (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981).

31. Marthe Robert, Novela de los orígenes u orígenes de la novela (Madrid: Taurus, 1973).

32. Teresa de la Parra, Ifigenia: Diario de una señorita que escribió porque se fastidiaba (Paris: Casa Editorial Franco-Iberoamericana, 1924).

33. Elizabeth Garrels, in Las grietas de la ternura: Nueva lectura de Teresa de la Parra (Caracas: Monte Avila, 1986), makes note of de la Parra's exchanges on the topic of women's position in the world of letters.

34. Cynthia Steele has suggested that much of the fiction by Latin American women fits the category of "failed bildungsroman," in her article. "Toward a Socialist Feminist Criticism of Latin American Literature," Ideologies and Literature 4, 16 (1983): 327.

35. As a discussion relevant to my argument, it is worth considering Margaret Homans's essay, "Her Very Own Howl: The Ambiguities of Representation in Recent Women's Fiction," Signs 9, 2 (1983): 186-205, in which she studies the uses of nonverbal utterances in women's fiction.

36. María Luisa Bombal, La última niebla (Buenos Aires: Andina, 1981).

37. I have commented on the uses of female irrationalism and flight in the two writers mentioned in "Sara de Etcheverts: The Contradictions of Literary Feminism," in Women in Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols , ed. Beth K. Miller (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 243-258.

38. Teresa de la Parra, Memorias de Mamá Blanca (1929; reprint Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1966).

39. Elizabeth Abel addresses the subtext of female bonding in "Narrative Structure(s) and Female Development: The Case of Mrs. Dalloway ," in The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development , eds. Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1983), 161-185.

40. Norah Lange, Los dos retratos (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1956). break

* The work presented here has been shaped by discussions with many people. My colleagues in the UC-Stanford Seminar have been an ongoing source of guidance and inspiration. I am also indebted to many graduate students in the Department of Spanish and Portugese at Stanford, who have been vital interlocutors on issues of gender and literary history over the past several years. In particular, this paper has benefited from discussions with Magali Roy (on women and nationalism), Nina Menéndez (on Gorriti), Marcela Prado (on Mercedes Marín del Solar), Elena Feder (on de la Parra), Efraín Kristal (on indigenismo ), and Linda Koski (on Brunet and Bombal).

1. Javier Ocampo López, Historia de las ideas de integración de América Latina (Tunja: Editorial Bolivariana Internacional, 1981).

2. Joan Landis, "Women and the Public Sphere: A Modern Perspective," Social Analysis 15: (1984): 20-31.

3. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).

4. José Mármol, Amalia , ed. Teodosio Fernández Rodríguez (Madrid: Editora continue

Nacional, 1984), 738-739. English translation by Mary J. Serrano (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1919), 366-367.

5. José Mármol, "Manuela Rosas," in Asesinato del Sr. Dr. D. Florencio Varela/ Manuela Rosas , ed. Juan Carlos Ghiano (Buenos Aires: Casa Pardo, 1972), 101-126.

6. Juana Manuela Gorriti, "El guante negro," in Sueños y realidades (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca de la Nación, 1903): 91-127.

7. For extended commentary, see Elizabeth Garrels, Las grietas de la ternura: Nueva lectura de Teresa de la Parra (Caracas: Monte Avila, 1986).

8. Ventura García Calderón, "Amor indígena," in Obra Escogida , ed. Luis Alberto Sánchez. (Lima: Ediciones Edubanco), 420-424.

9. Enrique López Albújar, "El campeón de la muerte," in Cuentos andinos , 4th ed. (Lima: J. M. Baca, 1965), 27-40.

10. Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, Tabaré (Montevideo: Barreiro y Ramos, 1888). The quotation is from book 1, canto 2. For an introduction to this work, see Enrique Anderson Imbert, Análisis de "Tabaré" (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1968).

11. Bonnie Frederick, "The Unwilling Traveler: The Journey of the Captive Woman" (Paper delivered at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, October 1987).

12. Gabriela Mistral, Poema de Chile , ed. Doris Dana (Santiago: Pomaire, 1942).

13. This "official" mode has, of course, not always been completely inaccessible to women. One is reminded, for example, of Mercedes Marín del Solar's "Canto fúnebre a la muerte de don Diego Portales" (1837), considered to be one of the founding texts of the Chilean lyric. In the twentieth century, women poets have participated, like Neruda, in the oppositional, protest-oriented branch of this militant tradition, though perhaps not in the epic dimensions of the Canto general . One thinks, for instance, of the militant socialist poetry of Magda Portal written in the context of Peruvian labor struggles of the 1930s and 1940s, or of Violeta Parra as the voice of Chile in the 1960s and 1970s. break

1. Civil rights for women included, for example, the right to enter into contracts without a husband's consent for a married woman and parental authority for a widow. See, for greater detail, Marifran Carlson, ¡ Feminismo!: The Women's Movement in Argentina from Its Beginnings to Eva Perón (Chicago: Academy of Chicago Publishers: 1988), 166.

2. Catalina H. Wainerman and Marysa Navarro, El trabajo de la mujer en la Argentina: Un análisis preliminar de las ideas dominantes en las primeras décadas del siglo XX , Cuadernos del CENEP 7 (Buenos Aires: CENEP, 1979), 16.

3. For an overview of feminist history in Argentina, see María del Carmen Feijoó, "Las luchas feministas," Todo Es Historia 2, 128 (January 1978): 6-23. break

4. Feijóo, "Las luchas feministas," 12-14.

5. For an overview of Argentine film history, see Jorge Miguel Couselo, et al., Historia del cine argentino (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1984).

6. For the importance of these actresses in film history, see William K. Everson, American Silent Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

7. For a detailed commentary on the events of this week, see Hugo del Campo, "La semana trágica," in La clase media en poder , ed. Haydeé Gorostegui de Torres, Historia integral Argentina 6 (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1971), 63-84.

8. David Rock, Argentina 1516-1982: From the Spanish Colonization to the Falklands War (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1985), 202. See also Sandra D. McGee's articles and book on La Liga Patriótica.

9. The bound edition I consulted placed this story one page before photos of the cadavers from the Semana Trágica; I do not know whether this was the page sequence in the original issue. break

1. For a detailed discussion of the theme of tradition and its manifestations, see Edward Shile, Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). See also San- soft

dra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, "Tradition and the Female Talent," in The Poetics of Gender , ed. Nancy Miller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).

2. Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image-Music-Text , trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 142-148.

3. For a criticism of Barthes's position see Naomi Schor, Breaking the Chain: Women, Theory, and French Realist Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 187.

4. For this theme see Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd, "Introduction: Minority Discourse—What Is to Be Done?" in Cultural Critique (University of Minnesota) 2, special issue, "The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse" (Fall 1987): 13.

5. See Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minority Literature , trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1986), chap. 3.

6. Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image-Music-Text , trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977): 142-148.

7. In Ocre (1925), compiled in Alfonsina Storni, Obra poética completa (Buenos Aires: Editorial Meridion, 1961). All references are to this edition.

8. We are familiar with an unpublished study by Gwen Kirkpatrick on the theme: "Alfonsina Storni: A Return to History" (Paper delivered at the Iberoamerican Congress of Literature, Stanford University, July 1985).

9. Her first book, La inquietud del rosal , appeared in 1916.

10. In 1914 she participated in a homage to Belgium, on the occasion of the German invasion.

11. Worthy of mention are the armistice signed in Compiegne in 1918, "the tragic week" ("la semana trágica") of the workers' strike and the ensuing repression at the Vasena Ironworks in Buenos Aires in 1919, the First Congress in Geneva (1920), which brought together workers and management, the Third International in Moscow in 1921, Mussolini's march on Rome in 1922, and the regulation of working conditions for women and children in Argentina in 1923.

12. Gwen Kirkpatrick, "Alfonsina Storni." Kirkpatrick also quotes an illuminating commentary on Storni by Gabriela Mistral: "knowledgeable about life as few are, offering the most apt comments on the most diverse subjects, a very cosmopolitan woman who has been in touch with everything and has integrated all of it."

13. Alfonsina Storni, El dulce daño (Buenos Aires: Sociedad Cooperativa Editorial, 1918).

14. Alfonsina Storni, Irremediablemente (Buenos Aires: Cooperativa Editorial, 1919). For a complete bibliography see Marta Baralis, Contribución a la bibliografía de Alfonsina Storni (Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las Artes, 1964).

15. It is interesting to see a poet receiving and reformulating the very tradition with which she is identified, while not having contributed more extensively to its elaboration. The semantic reformulation of these concepts is what strikes us as most significant about this poem. On first reading it appears to be enunciated within traditional boundaries, and perhaps that is why it has not received much attention.

16. We are thinking here of the manner in which Foucault indicates how difference is enunciated from the sphere of power, in such a way that what is enunciated produces the limits within which difference can be transformed into discursive material. With regard to this see Michel Foucault, El discurso del poder , ed. Oscar Terán break

17. Quotations of this poem are from Alfonsina Storni, Obra poética completa (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Meridion, 1961), 11-2.

18. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957).

19. Jurij Tynjanov, "On Literary Evolution," in Readings in Russian Poetics , ed. Ladislav Matejka and Krystna Pomorska (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971).

20. Here we are employing the concept elaborated by Susan Gubar in " 'The Blank Page' and the Issues of Female Creativity," in Writing and Sexual Difference , ed. Elizabeth Abel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 73-94.

21. Jacques Lacan, Feminine Sexuality: J. Lacan and the "École Freudienne ," ed. and trans. Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983).

22. We have in mind the conventions of amour courtois as exemplified in the poetry of Petrarch and Provençal poets, as well as Renaissance developments as seen in the work of Shakespeare, Sidney, and Spenser.

23. We are employing here a concept adapted from Teresa de Lauretis's proposal in Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 5. In this work the author distinguishes between the concept "woman"—a fictive product shaped by congruent and dominant discourses in Western culture and construed as "different from man"—"women" as real, historical beings, who have not yet been defined outside of the discourses mentioned, yet whose material existence is undeniable. break

1. For assistance with research in Buenos Aires, I am grateful to the staff of the Biblioteca, Nacional of Buenos Aires; to Washington and Teresita Pereyra, who generously allowed me to use their private library; to Lea Fletcher; and to Susana Zanetti.

2. Nosotros , n.s. 3, 31 (October 1938): 276. All translations from Spanish are my own.

3. Jorge Luis Borges, "Nydia Lamarque," Proa 2, 14 (December 1925): 52.

4. Jorge Luis Borges, "Prólogo (III)," Índice de la nueva poesía americana , ed. Alberto Hidalgo et al. (Buenos Aires: Sociedad de Publicaciones el Inca, 1926), 15.

5. Eduardo González Lanuza, "Ubicación de Alfonsina," Sur 7 (November 1938): 55-56.

6. Ibid., 56.

7. Quoted in Alfredo Veivaré, Alfonsina Storni , Capítulo de la historia argentina 51 (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1980), 329 (originally published in El Mercurio de Chile in 1926).

8. Juan Parra del Riego, Antología de poetisas americanas (Montevideo: Claudio García Editor, 1923), 109.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Quoted in Rachel Phillips, Alfonsina Storni: From Poetess to Poet (London: Tamesis, 1975), 126.

12. "Como viven y trabajan las figuras descollantes del ambiente: En casa de la poetisa Alfonsina Storni," La Razón , 14 November 1927, 5.

13. For biographical information, see the chronology by Mabel Mármol in Conrado Nalé Roxlo, Genio y figura de Alfonsina Storni (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1964), 5-20. For more listings, see Marta Baralis, Bibliografía argentina de artes y letras (Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las Artes, 1964), vol. 18.

14. Sandra F. McGee, "The Visible and Invisible Liga Patriótica Argentina, 1919-28: Gender Roles and the Right Wing," Hispanic American Historical Review 64, 2 (1984) 236. I thank Francesca Miller for this reference.

15. Fermín Estrella Gutiérrez, "Alfonsina Storni: su vida y su obra," in Estudios literarios (Buenos Aires: Academia Argentina de Letras, 1969), 305.

16. Alfonsina Storni, "Entre un par de maletas a medio abrir y la manecilla del reloj," Revista Nacional (Montevideo) 1, 2 (February 1938): 216-217.

17. Ibid., 214.

18. Manuel Gálvez, "Alfonsina Storni," Nosotros , n.s. 3, 32 (November 1938): 370.

19. Phillips, Alfonsina Storni , 6. See also 1-14. Mark Smith-Soto, in his El arte de continue

Alfonsina Storni (Bogotá: Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1986), includes a study of the critical reception of Storni's work, as well as a chapter on her later poetry.

20. Carlos Alberto Andreola, Alfonsina Storni: Inédita (Buenos Aires: n.p., 1974), 98.

21. Nalé Roxlo, Genio y figura , 10.

22. Carlos Alberto Andreola, Alfonsina Storni: Vida, Talento, Soledad (Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1976), 299.

23. Lily Sosa de Newton, Las argentinas de ayer a hoy (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Zanetti, 1967), 216.

24. María del Carmen Feijóo, "Las feministas," in La vida de nuestro pueblo (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1982), 5-6. For more information on the women's movements in Argentina and the Southern Cone, see also Feijóo, "Las luchas feministas," Todo Es Historia 128 (January 1978): 6-23; Asunción Lavrín, The Ideology of Feminism in the Southern Cone, 1900-1940 , Latin American Program Working Papers 169 (Washington, D.C.): Wilson Center, Smithsonian Institution, 1986); and Cynthia Little, "Education, Philanthropy, and Feminism: Components of Argentine Womanhood, 1860-1926," in Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives , ed. Asunción Lavrín (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), 235-253.

25. Feijóo, "Las feministas," 14.

26. As both Asunción Lavrín and Cynthia Little point out in their previously cited studies, the Socialist Party was outspoken in its defense of women's rights, supporting suffrage, the right to absolute divorce, paternity investigations, and legal equality of both legitimate and illegitimate children. See Lavrín, 8, and Little, 243.

27. For biographical data on Alicia Moreau de Justo, see Mirta Henault, Alicia Moreau de Justo (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1983), and Sosa de Newton Las argentinas , 142-143, 148, 191.

28. In her review for Nuestra Causa of Storni's Languidez , Adela García Salaberry (teacher, journalist, and secretary of the Unión Feminista Nacional) defended Storni's work, calling her "uno de los más originales genios líricos de América" and "nuestra más genial poeta" (2, 22 [April 1921]: 230.) In the same year the magazine records an "Homenaje a Alfonsina Storni" presented by the Unión Feminista Nacional, on the occasion of her poetry prize in the municipal competition.

Mirta Henault states that Storni was also a contributor to Nuestra Causa (77). I have not, however, been able to examine those issues of the magazine.

29. Alfonsina Storni, "Un tema viejo," La Nota 4, 194 (April 25, 1919): 501.

30. Sosa de Newton, Las argentinas , 148-149.

31. "La perfecta dactilógrafa," La Nación , 9 May 1920, sec. 2: 1.

32. La Nota 4, 202 (June 27, 1919): 682.

33. Nuestra Revista 4, 34 (April 1923): 45-47. The same article was originally published in La Nación , 14 November 1920: 9.

34. La Nota 5, 210 (August 22, 1919): 878.

35. La Revista del Mundo (Buenos Aires), August 1919: 12-19.

36. La Nota 5, 22 (November 14, 1919): 1173.

37. La Nota 4, 194 (April 25, 1919): 500. break

1. John King, "Towards a Reading of the Argentine Literary Magazine Sur ," Latin American Research Review 16, 2 (1981): 57-78. For the most extensive study of Sur , continue

see John King, " Sur and Argentine Culture: 1931-1970" (Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1982).

This question is discussed in the context of Ocampo's collected work in Janet Greenberg, "The Divided Self: Forms of Autobiography in the Writings of Victoria Ocampo" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1986).

2. Of particular note is Sylvia Molloy's upcoming book on autobiography in Argentina which contains a significant rereading of Victoria Ocampo's autobiography.

3. Although Ocampo had been writing her "Memorias" since the 1930s, the version finally published was composed in 1952-1953 and revised continuously until shortly before her death.

The Autobiografía has been published in six volumes by Ediciones Revista Sur (Buenos Aires): Volume 1: El archipiélago [the archipelago], 1979; 2: El imperio insular [the insular empire] (1980), 1982; 3: La rama de Salzburgo [the Salzburg branch] (1981), 1982; 4: Viraje [changing direction], 1982; 5: Figuras simbólicas—Medida de Francia [symbolic figures—using France as a measure], 1983; VI: Sur y Cía [Sur & Company], 1984. All dates in parentheses refer to the latest editions.

4. John King, "Towards a Reading."

5. "Victoria" (1981), rpt. in Páginas de José Bianco (Buenos Aires: Editorial Celtia, 1984), 184-185.

6. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, "Victoria Ocampo," Vuelta 3, 30 (May 1979): 45.

7. A term given its current meaning in feminist context by Adrienne Rich, "When We Dead Awaken: Writing in Re-Vision", in On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979). Rich defines the critical "re-vision" of literature from a feminist perspective as ''the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a critical direction." This process "is for women more than a chapter in cultural history—it is an act of survival" (35).

8. Elaine Showalter, "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness," in Writing and Sexual Difference , special issue of Critical Inquiry 8, 2 (Winter 1981): 202-203. Showalter also describes two distinct varieties of feminist criticism—the first is concerned with "woman as reader," the second with "woman as writer"—in "Toward A Feminist Poetics," in The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory , ed. Elaine Showalter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985).

9. Elizabeth Abel, "Editor's Introduction," in Writing and Sexual Difference , 173.

10. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, "Victoria Ocampo," 47.

11. "Carta al lector a propósito del título," Testimonios III (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1946), 8.

12. "Mujeres en la Academia," Testimonios 10 (Buenos Aires: SUR, 1977), 19.

13. See, for example, María Núñez, "Me casé para darle el gusto a mi padre" (the last part in a series of excerpts from the Autobiografía ), Para ti (Buenos Aires) 28 December 1980; and Ernesto Schoo, "La vida de Victoria Ocampo," pt. 3, Revista Siete Dias 9 (July 1980): 99-102. Prepublication excerpts were also published in La Nación and the Spanish edition of Life (exact dates unavailable).

A new wave of essays in homage to Ocampo also appeared in popular magazines after her death, some with extravagant photographs. See, for example, Luis Mazas, "Victoria Ocampo: La señora cultura," Somos 2, 64 (December 9, 1977); and María Ester Vázquez, "Homenaje a Victoria Ocampo: Una argentina universalita," Brigitte (Buenos Aires), 7 January 1980. break

14. One of many flattering titles coined by the popular press. This appears in Luis Mazas, "Victoria Ocampo: La señora cultura," Somos (roughly equivalent to Time or Newsweek ), 2, 64 (December 9, 1977).

15. Marcus K. Billson and Sidonie A. Smith discuss the distinction between women's autobiography and memoirs in "Lillian Hellman and the Strategy of the 'Other,' " in Women's Autobiography: Essays in Criticism , ed. Estelle C. Jelinek (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 163.

16. On Eva Perón's autobiography, see especially Marysa Navarro, "Of Sparrows and Condors: The Autobiography of Eva Perón," in The Female Autograph , ed. Domna Stanton (New York: Literary Forum, 1984), 205-211.

17. Sandra Caruso Mortola Gilbert and Susan Dreyfuss David Gubar, "Ceremonies of the Alphabet: Female Grandmatologies and the Female Autograph," in The Female Autograph , ed. Domna C. Stanton, 25-26. The title plays on Jacques Lacan's term from Of Grammatology .

18. Elizabeth Winston, "The Autobiographer and Her Readers: From Apology to Affirmation," in Woman's Autobiography: Essays in Criticism , ed. Estelle Jelinek, 95.

19. Patricia Meyer Spacks, "Selves in Hiding," in Women's Autobiography: Essays in Criticism , ed. Estelle Jelinek, 131.

20. This term was coined by Domna Stanton in "Autogynography: Is the Subject Different?" in The Female Autograph , ed. Domna Stanton.

21. Miller, "Women's Autobiography in France: For a Dialectics of Identification," in Women and Language in Literature and Society , ed. Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker, and Nelly Furman (New York: Praeger, 1980), 267. Miller expands on the distinction made by Helene Cixous in The Laugh of the Medusa of a "marked" masculine form of writing to include a "masculine mode of reception."

22. See, for example, Philippe Lejeune's definition of "the autobiographical pact," first in L'autobiographie en France (Paris: Armand Colin, 1971) and then in Le pacte autobiographique (Paris: Seuil, 1975) and "Le pacte autobiographique (bis)," Poetique 56 (November 1983): 416-434. In "Women and Autobiography at Author's Expense," his only treatment of women's autobiography (in The Female Autograph , ed. Domna C. Stanton), Lejeune concludes that ''what women are undoubtedly trying to gain through the tool of autobiography is equality in the expression of unhappiness" (259).

Also see Roy Pascal's influential study, Design and Truth in Autobiography (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960).

23. Domna Stanton, "Autogynography," 6-7.

24. Estelle Jelinek, "Introduction: Women's Autobiography and the Male Tradition," Women's Autobiography , 10. Other important studies of women, autobiography, and memory include Estelle C. Jelinek, The Tradition of Women's Autobiography: From Antiquity to the Present (Boston: Twayne, 1986); Dale Spender, ed., Personal Chronicles: Women's Autobiographical Writings , special issue of Women's Studies International Forum 10, 1 (1987); Margaret A. Lourie, Domna Stanton, and Martha Vicinus, eds., Women and Memory , special issue of Michigan Quarterly Review 36, 1 (Winter 1987).

25. Jelinek, Women's Autobiography , 10.

26. Patricia Meyer Spacks, "Selves in Hiding," 113. For a provocative discussion of variations on "confessional" and "spiritual" autobiographies by politically engaged women of the nineteenth century, see also Estelle Jelinek, "The Paradox and Success of E. Cady Stanton," Women's Autobiography . break

27. In Emilie Bergmann's essay in the present volume, Sor Juana is treated as a central precursor to feminist consciousness and autobiographical practice. Also see Electa Arenal, "The Convent as Catalyst for Autonomy: Two Hispanic Nuns of the Seventeenth Century," in Women in Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols , ed. Beth Miller (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1983), 174.

28. Juan José Sebreli, "Victoria Ocampo" (1975), rpt. in De Buenos Aires y su gente: Antología (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1982), 144. Also see Blas Matamoro, Oligarquía y literatura (Buenos Aires: Libros del Tercer Mundo, 1975), with scathing chapters on Victoria and Silvina Ocampo, Manuel Mújica Lainez, and others. Variations on this line of criticism continue to be published regularly in the Argentine press.

29. Adolfo Prieto, La literatura autobiográfica argentina (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1982), 50, 21. Prieto does not mention Ocampo, since she falls outside the chronological boundaries of his study. The memoirs and letters of Mariquita Sánchez (who does fall within the period) are mentioned only in passing; Prieto offers little apparatus for analyzing the memoirs of women or others who did not figure in the central military and political events of the period.

30. Gilbert and Gubar, "Ceremonies," 25.

31. See especially Delfina Bunge de Galvez, Viaje alrededor de mi infancia (1938) and La vida en los sueños (1951); Norah Lange, Cuadernos de infancia (1937); Carlotta Garrido de la Peña, Mis recuerdos (1935); María Rosa Oliver's three-volume autobiography, Mundo, mi casa: Recuerdos de infancia (1965), La vida cotidiana (1969), and Mi fé es el hombre (1981, published posthumously); and Silvina Bullrich, Mis memorias (1980).

32. Elizabeth Winston, "The Autobiographer and Her Readers," 94-95.

33. Ibid., 95.

34. Nancy K. Miller, 262-263.

35. Ibid., 270-272. See also Germaine Brée's essay on George Sand, "The Fictions of Autobiography," Nineteenth Century French Studies 4 (Summer 1976): 438-449.

36. Rodríguez Monegal, "Victoria Ocampo," 47.

37. Elaine Showalter, "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness," 203. break

1. Sor Juana's birthdate is disputed. In his biography of Sor Juana (I700), Father Diego Calleja gives her birthdate as November 12, 1651. Since the celebration of her tercentenary in 1951, a certificate of baptism has been found to support her birthdate as 1648, which Octavio Paz regards as "almost certain." Octavio Paz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; O, Las trampas de la fe (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1982), 96-97.

2. Rosario Casteilanos, Mujer que sabe latín (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1973, rpt. 1984), 19-20: "Para elegirse a sí misma y preferirse por encima de los demés se necesita haber llegado, vital, emocional o reflexivamente a lo que Sartre llama una situación límite. Situación límite por su intensidad, su dramatismo, su desgarradora densidad metafísica.

"Monjas que derriban las paredes de su celda como Sor Juana y la Portuguesa; doncellas que burlan a los guardianes de su castidad para asir el amor como Melibea." (Throughout this essay, English paraphrases are mine unless otherwise indicated.)

3. Both Rosario Castellanos and Marie-Cécile Bénassy-Berling cast Sor Juana in the role of Virginia Woolf's imaginary "Shakespeare's sister." Bénassy-Berling, however, compares the Mexican nun, with her unique and irresistible vocation for learning, to other successful women writers of the period: Christine de Pisan, María de Zayas, and Aphra Behn. See Castellanos, Mujer que sabe latín , 43; Bénassy-Berling, Humanisme et religion chez Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: La femme et la culture au XVII ^e siècle (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, Editions Hispaniques, 1982), 74.

4. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras corapletas , ed. Alfonso Méndez Plancarte (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura. Económica, 1951-1957), Vol. 4, Comedias, sainetes, y prosa , ed. Alberto G. Salceda (1957), 37-38. break

5. "Habiendo conocido [ . . . ] lo singular de su erudición junto con su no pequeña hermosura, atractivos todos a la curiosidad de muchos, que desearían conocerla y tendrían por felicidad el cortejarla, solía decir que no podía Dios enviar azote mayor a aqueste reino que si permitiese que Juana Inés se quedase en la publicidad del siglo." Cited in Paz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz , 12.

6. Electa Arenal, "The Convent as Catalyst for Autonomy," in Women in Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols , ed. Beth Miller (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1983). See also: Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989).

7. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras completas 4: 458, 460.

8. Obras completas , 4: 441-442. Translation by Margaret Sayers Peden in A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Salisbury, Conn.: Lime Rock Press, 1982), 18-20. Josefina Ludmer also addresses the permutations of "callar" and "decir" in this passage in "Tretas del débil," in La sartén por el mango: Encuentro de escritoras latinoamericanas , ed. Patricia Elena González and Eliana Ortega (Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Ediciones Huracán, 1984), 47-54. See also Paz, Sor Juana , 16-17.

9. Paz, Sor Juana , 12, 92-5, 172-173.

10. Ibid., 91, citing Dorothy Schons, "Some Obscure Points in the Life of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz," Modern Philology 24, 2 (1926): 10-162.

11. Estela Portillo Trambley, Sor Juana and Other Plays (Ypsilanti, Mich.: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, 1983). Also, Electa Arenal, This Life Within Me Won't Keep Still , a play based on the lives and works of Sor Juana and Anne Bradstreet, performed in New York, fall 1979 and spring 1987.

12. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras completas , vol. 1, Lírica personal , 228. Translation by Muriel Kittel in Angel Flores and Kate Flores, eds., The Defiant Muse: Hispanic Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York: Feminist Press, 1986), 21-23.

13. Paz, Sor Juana , 472-486; Georgina Sabat-Rivers, El "Sueño" de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Tradiciones literarias y originalidad (London: Tamesis, 1976); and Luis Harss's introduction and commentary in Sor Juana's Dream (New York: Lumen Books, 1986), 23.

14. John Beverley, Aspects of Góngora's "Soledades" (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1979).

15. Jean Franco, "Sor Juana Explores Space," in Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 33-38.

16. Obras completas , 1: 337; translation by Luis Harss, Sor Juana's Dream , 32, commentary 76.

17. Obras completas , 1: 353-354; translation by Luis Harss, Sor Juana's Dream , 60-62.

18. Michel Beaujour, Miroirs d'encre: Rhétorique de l'autoportrait (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 7-23.

19. Obras completas , 1: 171-173.

20. Alan S. Trueblood, A Sor Juana Anthology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 51.

21. Obras completas , 1: 320-330. break

22. Paz, Sor Juana , 136-138.

23. Bénassy-Berling, Humanisme et religion , 97, takes issue with Pfandl's depiction of Sor Juana's pursuit of knowledge as self-contained and devoid of any interest in teaching. Trueblood, A Sor Juana Anthology , 6, says she taught in a school associated with the convent.

24. Obras completas , vol. 2, Villancicos y letras sacras , 170-172; translation by Kate Flores, The Defiant Muse , 24. break