Divorcing Tradition: Marriage, Family and Female Homosociality in Puerto Rican Literature
Leon, Kathy Jeanne
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/86125
Description
Title
Divorcing Tradition: Marriage, Family and Female Homosociality in Puerto Rican Literature
Author(s)
Leon, Kathy Jeanne
Issue Date
2003
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Goldman, Dara
Department of Study
Spanish
Discipline
Spanish
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Women's Studies
Language
eng
Abstract
This dissertation examines the portrayal of marriage, family, and social relations between women (female homosociality) in selected works of Luisa Capetillo, Rosario Ferre, and Ana Lydia Vega, three Puerto Rican women writers of the twentieth century. In unique ways, Capetillo, Ferre and Vega destabilize the various legal and literary versions of the heteropatriarchal family imposed locally and by the colonial government. Their narratives construct alternative histories and cultural identities for Puerto Ricans precisely because they are realized through various types of female-female love, rather than being predicated on traditional heterosexual coupling. Various versions of female solidarity and love are their way of at least imagining a more egalitarian society, if not the vehicle for true social change. These authors thus rewrite the traditional Puerto Rican love story---a love story that is repeatedly played out between men and against the backdrop of international patriarchal systems---between women. Finally, I propose that their anti-canonical texts suggest that twentieth-century Puerto Rican women's writing constitutes an alternative, female homosocial canon of its own and a new foundational fiction for Puerto Rico.
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