." . . I didn't want to tell you the truth for anything in the world, because it seemed very humiliating to me . . ." The truth is that Iphigenia is bored and, more than bored, buried alive in her grandmother's house in Caracas, Venezuela. After the excitement of being a beautiful, unchaperoned young woman in Paris, her father's death has sent her back to a forgotten homeland, where rigid decorum governs. Two men--the married man she adores and the wealthy fiance she abhors--offer her escape from her prison. Which of these impossible suitors will she choose? Iphigenia was first published in 1924 in Venezuela, where it hit patriarchal society like a bomb. Teresa de la Parra was accused of undermining the morals of young women with this tale of a passionate woman who lacks the money to establish herself in the liberated, bohemian society she craves. Yet readers have kept the novel alive for decades, and this first English translation now introduces its heroine to a wider audience.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Here in its first English translation, this accomplished 1924 novel by de la Parra, a Venezuelan, follows Maria Eugenia Alonso as she makes the rocky transition from her youth in fashionable France to adulthood in Venezuela, where women's existence is circumscribed by propriety and financial dependence. After her father's death, she returns to her native Caracas to live with her grandmother and maiden aunt. Since she is poor (her inheritance stolen by an uncle), her grandmother is determined to barter her beauty and respectability for a desirable marriage. In the privacy of her room, with its barred window, Maria Eugenia writes of her friendship with a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage; her own ill-fated love (her suitor ultimately marries for money and advancement); her participation in an old-fashioned courtship ritual in which a marriageable woman sits in the window of her home like ``luxury items that are exhibited . . . to tempt shoppers''; and her engagement to an insensitive and narcissistic man. In the process, Maria Eugenia's own youthful vanity and frivolity are crushed by a culture that sacrifices its women to the greater glory and comfort of its men.
Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
"de la Parra conveys the intensity of Iphigenia's rebellious voice, the range of her intelligence and the degree of her sexual obsessiveness. But [she] also anticipates Simone de Beauvoir's warning that brains and sexual liberation don't matter at all without a firm economic base." Barbara Probst Solomon, Nation
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must for all women,
By A Customer
This review is from: Iphigenia (Texas Pan American Series) (Paperback)
I wish I had come across this book years ago. De la Parra startled me with some of her ideas. Although her main character lived at about the turn of the century in South America, her experiences give me insight into my own. It is beautifully written and engrossing.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Should be a Feminist Classic,
This review is from: Iphigenia (Texas Pan American Series) (Paperback)
Parra's book seems light years ahead of time, an insightful critique of Latin machismo and oppression that makes a frontal attack on forced matrimony, organized religion, sexual mores and the domestic sphere. Though the heroine's flightiness and indecision are bound to irritate some readers, its crucial to keep in mind that the author was single-handedly clearing space for a feminine (if not a Feminist) perspective within the confines of a deeply patriarchal and misogynistic narrative framework, one that systematically relegated women characters to passive, at times silent, roles. Here, Parra takes up a common enough trope--that of the orphaned young woman ripe for marriage and pursued by multiple suitors--and shatters the mold, giving her protagonist not only a voice, but a consciousness. Maria Eugenia is certainly one of the first heroines in Latin American fiction to openly question her position in society and to rail against the fact that she is little more than a pawn in the hands of men and older, scheming women. She is an unforgettable character even if--quite inevitably--she fails in the end to actually remove herself from the patriarchal structures that so violently work to keep her mind and body in check. The book is not perfect, of course, it could not be considering that its primary purpose seems to blaze a trail, but for all its windiness and occasional lapses into vapidity, it is an important work, one that deserves a critical revival, if not a wide readership.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A definite, timeless classic!,
By
This review is from: Iphigenia (Texas Pan American Series) (Paperback)
I first learned of this book when I watched the Venezuelan miniseries many years ago. I was haunted by how contemporary its theme still is: a smart, sophisticated young woman trying to adapt to her family's facade of wealth, falling in love with a social climber, and eventually trying to settle for a well-to-do suitor and live out a life of boredom. This book should be read by women of all ages - the story is beautifully told, you will feel transported to the Caracas of the early 20th century.
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