Mundo, Demonio y Mujer.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: World, Demon and Woman

More than a novel, Mundo, demonio y mujer is a long meditation on coming to terms with oneself in a rapidly changing world in which the familiar rules no longer apply. Costa Rican writer Rima de Vallbona incorporates newspaper clippings, snippets of poetry, maxims and passages from scholarly tracts into her story in order to establish the time and atmosphere (the women's movement from the 1970s on) and the ideological framework within which her characters function--or try to.

Vallbona's protagonist is Renata, a middle-aged Central American woman living in Houston. Raised in a traditional family in which women were always subservient to men, Renata defied custom by continuing her education after high school and obtaining a university degree. Something of a rebel even as a child, Renata liked to play in the dirt and commune with nature, activities that horrified her mother. Trapped in a loveless marriage, Renata's repressed, bitter mother cautions her daughter that she will never catch a man if she continues to read books and advises her to protect her virginity at all costs, since no man wants damaged property. The propensity of traditionalist women to impose an unfulfilling, hierarchical, male-dominated system on their own daughters is one of the book's central issues.

Renata's development is further sabotaged by the admonitions of the local priest, who tries to convince her that her perfectly normal sexual drives are the work of the Devil.

Renata's hopes for a satisfying love life are dashed soon after she marries Antonio, an ambitious archeologist. Antonio turns out to be a domineering, violent, womanizing egotist whose abuses drive his wife into a long, desperate, suicidal depression. The crux of the novel deals with how the protagonist finally finds the courage to break out of this destructive relationship and how she learns to love and respect herself again. The narration alternates between first and third person, a device that allows the protagonist to examine herself from within, as in a typical autobiography, and from without, as if she were being observed by an onlooker.

In Houston, where the couple settles, Renata feels like an outsider, but soon realizes that alienation is a state of mind that doesn't depend on one's geographical location: "As a small child... Renata had felt like a foreigner, alienated in her own land... Here or there... it's all the same, the same exile hungering for eternity." Searching for an anchor, she...