ON THE DARKER SIDE OF "PARADISE": READING GENDER ROLES IN MARCELA SERRANO'S "HASTA SIEMPRE, MUJERCITAS" THROUGH THE LENSES OF DOMESTIC AND GOTHIC FICTION

Through its experimentation with literary sources and narrative design, Hasta siempre, mujercitas exposes flaws at the core of a landowning system forged on inequitable social and economic relations with the underclass. [...]it reveals the impact that such a constellation has on the cousins' lives, as it locks them into roles which promote extremes of interpersonal merger or separation. [...]there is Casilda, the girls' great aunt and the administrator of the family's sawmill, which she inherited at the death of her eldest brother. [...]these comments raise the question of who is worthy of inheriting rural Chile, a topic which appears in the voice of Ada, as she refers to E. M. Forster's Howards End in connection with the idea of herself writing a novel about "la pérdida del mundo rural" (239), but whose resolution remains ambiguous, given the ending of Serrano's novel. According to Wolfgang Iser, familiar materials drawn from a social and literary repertoire may undergo a possibly significant change, or "negation," when placed in a new network of relationships: "the norms - often selected from very different systems - are removed from their original context and set in a new one.