Novel
Ana Isabel, a Respectable Girl
Ana Isabel, una niña decente
Antonia Palacios · 1949
Synopsis
Ana Isabel is eight years old at the start of the narrative, in the Caracas of the early years of the twentieth century. Her family bears the names of the country's former heroes but lacks money: the father, ill, is without work, and the mother keeps the household going by making cigarette boxes and sewing uniforms. The little girl plays in the Plaza de La Candelaria with the children from the hills and meets at school classmates from well-off families, without understanding why some are called respectable and others not, while her parents strive to keep up the prestige of the name.
Context
The novel appeared in Buenos Aires in 1949, from Losada, reached Venezuela the following year and Europe in 1952. Critics read in it both a questioning of the roles imposed on women under Gómez, with mothers who must manage alone and absent fathers, and the country's shift to the oil economy, which threatens inherited hierarchies. Viceversa regards it as Venezuela's first female coming-of-age novel.
Who it is for
A novel in Spanish, translated into English in 2016 in Montreal; no French version is known.
Prizes and reception
Compulsory reading in Venezuelan schools, and the best-known of its author's prose books.
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