Rosario Castellanos: Gender Stereotypes In Her Work

Discuss the ways in which Rosario Castellanos challenges and subverts gender stereotypes in her work?

In this essay I am going to examine and discuss the work of one of Mexico’s most important literary figures, Rosario Castellanos, with particular emphasis on her feministic beliefs and the ways in which she used her writing to catapult her views into the forefront of society. Her writing reflects bitterness regarding the desires and misfortunes of the female population of her nation. Castellanos used poetry, novels and plays as a platform to voice the many inequalities that she deemed prevalent in society at that time. She committed to writing as a mechanism for social change.

To subvert, by definition, is to ‘undermine the power and authority of (an established system or institution’ . Castellanos was consistent and unapologetic in her main objective of undermining and

The author denounces sexism and believes in change. She demands the audience to acknowledge the injustice women have suffered in history. She demands change. In ‘El eterno femenino, she debunks popular notions of the feminine mystique. Castellanos ' method here is comic, and through a theatre language comprised of visual and verbal clichés she precisely captures, and then subverts, the many stereotypes of male-female roles and behaviour.’

Castellanos was joined by other feminists and writers of her era, who always encouraged women to write about women. She thought that only a woman could successfully and accurately project the thought and emotions of a women. It was commonly felt that men’s portrayal of women was superficial and insulting as it focused purely on appearance and their own idyllic views on what a woman should be, look and act like. ‘Negotiation of gender is a part of that fragmentation, in that the re-writing of women by men makes them nothing more than ‘acesario inventado por la imaginacion