ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Allende's work for its thematic interest and deployment of tropes borrowed from relevant mythical and fairy tale narratives, again examining their role in relation to matters of the construction of gendered identities. As part of the broader examination of the gender critique presented in Spanish American narratives of selfhood that is elucidated throughout Gender and the Self in Latin American Literature. Isabel Allende is one of the writers most associated with the Post-Boom and Eva Luna, her third novel, contains many of the common elements of that wave of Spanish American literature. Much like her fellow Post-Boom author Esquivel, Allende's literature, and in particular her perspectives on gender, have generated debate among those exploring her textual universe. Overall, Allende explores and exemplifies in Eva Luna is that social change requires and can be achieved by means of reengagement and rewriting of the foundational or grand narratives by which that same reality is formed.
