The atmosphere in Jorge Isaacs’ novel María is truly right wing. We know he was a conservative, and that the novel is set on a plantation, but I had not read it since spending some time every week for several years chatting with some well-heeled conservative Christians and beginning to understand the gestalt of their world.
The beauty of the surroundings they can afford, the faux mental health and mutual support, the gender roles, the declaredly sweet hierarchies, the piety, the lack of awareness, the self-absorption, the medievalism, the patriarchal style, the apparent safety, the official goodness and happiness, the closedness of this universe.
With the family house presented as paradisiacal this novel offers an interesting contrast to the film Camila and I wonder, perhaps I should teach this book in the fall.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I just looked the first few chapters, with an ambience of incestuous sensuality and happy, musically talented slaves. I hadn’t thought about this novel since grad school.
I did not discover it until I had to teach it, caught a class for someone else with the books already ordered. I read it and laughed aloud, it was so enfermiza. Now, taking it more seriously, I am quite revolted. It is deeply disturbed!