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Since its publication in 1867, María has enjoyed near-constant popularity throughout Latin America; indeed, it has never been out of print. Donald McGrady claims that "María [is] the widest-read novel in Hispanic America," having appeared in close to 140 editions in its first hundred years (139). Its popularity has been accompanied by critical attention focusing on topics ranging from the narrative structure, the character of María, and the role of Romanticism to patriarchy and nationalism in the novel's social structure. Of these, several critics have commented on the triangle formed by the narrator, Efrain, his father, and María herself. Yet one aspect of the novel has not been addressed in detail. That is the relationship between María and the father, a relationship that may provoke deeply disturbing implications for the careful reader. In this essay I will argue that a father-daughter relationship with incestuous overtones, whether realized or potential, results in the failure of María and Efrain's possible relationship and in the eventual destruction of the family unit. In this reading, it is the father's incestuous approaches toward María, not, as some critics have argued, María's love for Efraín, that cause her hysterical illness and eventually kill her.
Conditions are ripe in the household for the development of an incestuous relationship between the father and María. Although María is not the father's biological daughter, she does fulfill the role of a daughter within the household; while María is Efrain's second cousin by blood, she has been raised since the age of three as his sister and as the daughter of Efraín's mother and father. As Efraín comments, "Pocos eran entonces los que conociendo nuestra familia, pudiesen sospechar que María no era hija de mis padres" (13). Not only does María occupy the position of a daughter, but she does so in an exceptionally conventional-even overly so-patriarchal family. The women who might have protected her are absent, either literally or figuratively. Her biological mother, of course, is dead, and her adoptive mother accedes to her husband's wishes in almost all regards, either unable or unwilling to challenge him openly. When the adoptive mother does go against the father's desires, she does so secretly. Tellingly, when she conspires with her son, Efrain, against her husband, Efrain's father,...