womenandthewarstoryinmexico.docVIP

Women and the War Story in Mexico Women and the War Story in Mexico Niamh Thornton To Maura and Marcus, my parents TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface by Dr Ciaran Cosgrove i Acknowledgements v Introduction Just Warriors and Beautiful Souls 1 1. Tumulto y hojarasca: Gender, War and Nationalism in Mexico 11 1.1 Gender 18 1.2 Nation 27 1.3 Woman as Symbol 41 2. The novela de la revolución: Genesis and Exegesis 55 2.1 Los de abajo 62 2.2 Pedro Páramo 73 2.3 La muerte de Artemio Cruz 84 2.4 Conclusion 94 3. Questioning Universal Givens: Time, History and Truth in Elena Garro’s Los recuerdos del porvenir 97 3.1 Ixtepec Narrating 102 3.2 Public/Private Women 110 3.3 Time: History, Myth or Fiction 122 3.4 Conclusion 137 4. Fighting Invisibility: Women Revolutionaries in Elena Poniatowska’s Hasta no verte Jesus mío 139 4.1 Las soldaderas: History and Jesusa’s Story 144 4.2 Jesusa: Transgendered, Transvestite or Transsexual? 155 4.3 Talking and Telling Fictions 170  5. Boleros as an Escape: Revolution and Popular Culture in Arráncame la vida by ángeles Mastretta 179 5.1 Writing the Revolution: Duplicity, Complicity and Transformations 181 5.2 Catalina: Story-teller or Telling Stories? 188 5.3 Playing Roles in Public and Private 199 Conclusion From the Past to the Future 217 Bibliography 223 Index 243  PREFACE In ¨Women Writers and the Mexican Revolution¨, Niamh Thornton has provided us with an illuminating and rigorously executed study of the representation of women in conflict situations. Selected texts of twentieth-century Mexican literature are given detailed examination. The study has as its primary focus works by women writers, Elena Garro, Elena Poniatowska and Angeles Mastretta. By way of prolegomenon to the study, Thornton also examines canonical texts by selected male Mexican authors in order to study their representations of women during the Mexican Revolution. In such a field of study, one might have expected