Popular images of women in Mexico--conveyed through literature and, more recently, film and television--were long restricted to either the stereotypically submissive wife and mother or the demonized fallen woman. But new representations of women and their roles in Mexican society have shattered the ideological mirrors that reflected these images. This book explores this major change in the literary representation of women in Mexico.

Maria Elena de Valdes enters into a selective and hard-hitting examination of literary representation in its social context and a contestatory engagement...