Loneliness, intimacy and family in Las dos flores by Isabel Prieto de Landázuri (1833-1876).

Abstract

The subject of this article is the study of the play Las dos flores (1860) by Isabel Ángela Prieto de Landázuri, a writer who, although neither born nor died in Mexico, is part of the mexican literature, due that most of his work she wrote while living in the country.
          In general, to this day, criticism has emphasized the maternal contents and the female voice of Prieto de Landázuri; even, she the writer has been conceptualized as a champion of the Mexican home, defender of gender roles and promoter of heteronormalized patriarchal values.
          My purpose, however, is to show that, in the theater of Prieto de Landázuri, particularly in Las dos flores, the family is nothing but the meeting of conflicting solitudes. In this play, four lonely characters relate in the same space, in an unhealthy search for links that allow them to transcend their emotional voids. At the end, the attempt fails because, paradoxically, in order to inhabit the same space, they must remain in a silence that isolates them. Loneliness is thus the result of everyday life in the family. To speak, to express one’s feelings, would dissolve the blood nucleus. Supporting an alternating reading of Las dos flores is, in summary, my objective in this article.