Memorias de Paulina (1874) El juego de la provocación

Abstract

Memorias de Paulina (1874) a short novel written anonymously by José Negrete in Mexico, is a text that questions certain social consensuses and established institutions of the time. The main character, Paulina, was a dancer with a stormy past brought from France to be part of a ballet company in México, but who ends up in the world of prostitution. This paper seeks to take a closer look at the threshold where liberal and conservative ideologies meet and complement each other in the pages of the novel. For the critic, the novel has been, until now, first and foremost the object of study of censorship in nineteenth-century Mexico; However, there are very few critics who have approached it from a literary and cultural point of view. This work, by means of archival research and an analysis, will explore terms that confront each other and, in doing so, illustrate the nineteenth-century ideological problem. The femme fatale and, the ángel del hogar, eroticism and submission, are some aspects that will be considered. Attention will be paid to the female body, its sexuality and the social role of women as areas where this ideological confrontation takes place.