The Debunked Stereotypes: On “La densidad de las palabras” by Luisa Valenzuela

Abstract

In “La densidad de las palabras”, as in all the stories that make up the section “Cuentos de Hades” – which is part of the collection entitled Simetrías –, Luisa Valenzuela builds her plot starting from tha t of a well-known fairy tale by Perrault. The Argentine novelist, while reproducing almost faithfully the facts of the French author’s text, proposes them from a different perspective, obtaining the effect of reversing their meaning and message, in order to highlight and overcome the strict gender stereotypes that the traditional story transmits.