Los amores de Hortensia, that initiates the cycle of novels by Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera (1842-1909), owes some of its characters' attributes of extreme sensibility, beauty and intelligence to the longevity of Romanticism in Latin America during the nineteenth-century. Yet, the protagonist's search for independence, her intellectual superiority, and above all, her lucid understanding of the dynamics of gender and class within the asphyxiating atmosphere of Lima's upper-crust society, transgress the limits of the romantic heroine and plant her firmly in the tradition of the naturalistic...