María Eugenia got a lot more interesting when I realized that she could be considered a prototype of Bridget Jones!

María Eugenia is the protagonist/narrator of Teresa de la Parra's 1924 novel Ifigenia:Diario de una señorita que escribió porque se fastidiaba/Ifigenia: The Diary of a Young Lady Who Wrote Because She Was Bored. She's shallow, narcissistic and fails to notice when others are suffering until they're suffering a lot, like dying; and also fails to see the big picture and her part in it until the end of the narrative. As irritating as she is, she's also a proto-feminist and probably a very very accurate representation of the condition of the woman of her class in the Venezuela (por no decir toda la América Latina) of her time and a reminder that sacrifice is still the expectation of her. It's not coincidence that her first first name, María, evokes that sense of abnegation and that her second first name, Eugenia, sounds a lot like Ifigenia/Iphigenia, who also was a sacrifice (to many, and on many levels).

The frivolous parts of the novel, concerned with hair, clothes, jewelry, makeup and romance were fun to read, I have to admit. And, with its hot pink cover, Ifigenia is, albeit by a longshot, the closest thing I'll get to a fuck-off novel all summer.