Ifigenia: Diario de una senorita que escribio porque se fastidiaba
(Diary of a young lady who wrote because she was bored, 1924) is
the first of two novels by the Venezuelan writer Teresa de la Parra
(Paris, 1889-Madrid, 1936). Her second, much shorter novel, Las
memorias de Mama Blanca (1929), was one of the few authored by a
woman to be admitted to the Spanish American canon before the
radical rereading of the tradition by feminists in the 1970s and
80s. Ifigenia, however, was long neglected, in part, due to the
controversy it ignited when it first appeared and its subtle and
even deceptive use of a first person narrative. Recently, the
contemporary Mexican novelist Carmen Boullosa has described
Ifigenia as "one of the most convincing, intelligent, and seductive
novels in the Spanish] language," and called its republication "an
elemental and necessary act of literary justice." In her own times,
Teresa de la Parra mingled with the European and Latin American
avant garde, but resisted its fascination while taking note of its
lessons. Instead, she opted to respect the basic narrative rules of
the 19th century, but used these to describe a very modern
conflict: women's need for economic and intellectual independence,
and the tragic and far from edifying fate reserved for those who
fail to achieve it. Eugenia, the novel's young, naive, but
ambitious, intelligent, and well-read protagonist/narrator, tells
her own story, at first in a confidential letter to her best
friend, and then, to the ever forgiving indulgence of "Dear diary."
The narration is by turns witty, even mockingly funny,
presumptuously self-important, and poignant as it reveals the
temptations and doubts of an all too inexperienced young woman
pressured to choose among too few alternatives. Eugenia's
confessional tale takes us on a mesmerizing tour through the
confined universe of an upper class senorita in the Caracas of the
early 1920s. At first her journey seems a safe and even promising
one, but soon enough the reader discovers that her comparatively
privileged world bears little resemblance to paradise. To grow, to
mature, to understand, in this world mean to eschew ones better
judgment, to become diminished, to live life as a string of
renunciations. The title hints at sacrifice. To join this social
order is to become a sacrificial victim, true, but the voice we
listen to (socially constructed, like all voices) is compelling
proof that everything urgently needs to be rethought. The novel
itself forces us to rethink, and paradoxically does so by appearing
to respect the very rules that suffocate its heroine. In this
edition Elizabeth Garrels (MIT) provides a critical foreword and
notes to assist the reader in discovering the richness and
complexity of this longtime underestimated novel.
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