"No Hay Lugar Para Los Monstruos": Intellectuality, Rebellion, And Sexuality in Rosario Castellanos's Rito De Iniciación

Rosario Castellanos's Rito de Iniciación rehearses some of the Mexican writer's recurring themes and character types, as well as the sharp sense of ironic humor evident in her essays, poetry, and theater. At the same time, it may be her most experimental work of fiction, with an innovative structure as well as unorthodoxly-crafted characterization. In an unfinished essay about a literature without limits, borders, or restrictions, the author had described a new kind of writing, anticipating current critical trends. This novel manifests that intent. The mutable narrative point of view, which oscillates among third, second, and first persons in a non-linear fashion, for instance, is used to comment on the role of the intellectual in Latin America. And, because the novel treats the protagonist's development as and commitment to becoming a writer, it manifests quite clearly Castellanos's authorial self-consciousness. Indeed, in this bildungsroman, an important thread of the protagonist's intellectual maturation and emotional development is grounded in the examination of the uses and importance of reading and writing.

Despite the emphasis on a specific situation (Mexico, middle class, 1950s) and the use of apparently fossilized categories of feminist analysis, Castellanos's reworking of several clichéd themes connected to human developmental stages and the search for intellectual and emotional maturity retains a fresh quality. Her extraordinary prescience, narrative certainty, conceptual agility, and experimental style make the book as pertinent to the twenty-first century as it was in the mid-twentieth.