ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the exposition of gender difference that unfolds in Dar la vida y el alma, as well as to suggest that the metafictional gaze adopted by the narrator constitutes a mask to camouflage her interest in an anachronistic topic. Hispanists have found ample evidence of feminist aspects in Mayoral's narrative: an interest in feminist issues, an emphasis on strong female characters, and a preoccupation with interpersonal relationships. Gender difference has preoccupied critics and theorists since feminism shifted, in Elaine Showalter's words, from "feminist critique" to "gynocentrism" and began stressing women's writing as a gendered discourse that expresses specifically feminine experience or identity. Gender difference has been seen as conditioning epistemology, social and cultural status, textual production, and reading. The chapter describes the position of subject for women from a perspective of difference with its corollaries of binarism, duality, and dichotomy.
