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As a point of departure I begin with a quote by Rita Felski that explains what this paper aims to demonstrate: "...periods of supposedly progressive change have frequently coincided with a loss of power and status for women and have in fact occurred at their expense" (47). In the context of third wave feminism that has often questioned the assumption that "modernity" and "progress" have gone hand in hand with women's liberation, examining texts by women that narrate transitions to modernity can help us to explore this assumption more closely. In die Latin American context where scholars have been debating the extent to which "modernity" has even developed, this type of inquiry is even more necessary. ' Felski offers a general definition of "modernity," a potentially confusing term, that I find relevant for the purposes of this paper:
Modernity... signifies in the present context not only such socioeconomic processes as industrialization, urban expansion, and the increasing division of labor associated with the development of capitalism, but also the epistemic shift towards a secularized worldview exemplified in the articulation of universalizable concepts of rationality, freedom, and equality. (47)
As a starting point I pose die question: to what extent has modernity been beneficial for women's rights in Latin America? My analysis of texts by two female writers from the first half of the 20th century, Teresa de la Parra and Claudia Lars, will argue that from these authors' standpoints modernity has not necessarily translated into greater freedom or improved living conditions for women in their societies. I have chosen these two particular texts for three main reasons: first, they both use the memoir format that overtly looks backward to the past and attempts to narrativize it;2 secondly, they specifically grapple with Venezuela's and El Salvador's transitions from older (colonial) economic systems centered on the hacienda as primary productive unit to more modern capitalistic economies centered in the cities and their financial, industrial, and export sectors, and consequendy with the social changes that these shifts created; and thirdly, the texts follow strikingly similar patterns. Specifically, both writers represent the rural, pre-modern space of the hacienda as a space of greater freedom for upper-class women, a space that encouraged their development as individuals and eventually as writers. They...