In ‘prison-house of love’: The Bad Girl and bad girls of Mario Vargas Llosa

Abstract

Mario Vargas Llosa’s recent novel The Bad Girl centers around a sexually liberated woman whois in search of individual emancipation through transgressions of all social norms. The issue offemale sexuality and its relation with woman liberation occupies an important and debatableposition in Feminist discourse. Llosa’s own attitude to liberated female sexuality had been anambivalent one. In this paper I would like analyse and explore the question of woman’s liberationin the novel of Mario Vargas Llosa, taking into account the major conflicting Feminist discoursesas well as the presence and erasure of female sexuality in the history of Latin American novels.

Keywords

• Sexuality
• Transgression
• Feminism
• Identity
• Emancipation
• Oppression
• Eroticism