A critical scene: Stereotypes and gender ideology in the early reception of Marta Brunet and María Luisa Bombal

Abstract

Marta Brunet, María Luisa Bombal were the first female writers to enter the Chilean narrative canon. Through the analysis of their early 20h century critical reception, we discover that it worked in two ways: on the one hand, as the construction of what Will become their public figures, and on the Other, is an attempt to relate their texts to a traditional literary referent. In both cases, stereotypes as well as gender ideologies Will outplay the strictly literary criteria and Will contribute to the normalization of a writing that made that period's gender expectations vulnerable. The construction of degraded bodies, sublimated or travestied, Will be the strategies that the first critics Will elaborate for this effect.