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Review Of Jose E. Limón's Caballero: A Late Border Romance

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We hear the word romance and instinctively, we think about love, passion, marriage, and women. In his essay “Mexicans, Foundational Fictions, and the United States: Caballero, a Late Border Romance,” Jose E. Limón describes how the novel Caballero exemplifies different aspects of the historical romance genre, including the idea that the marriages presented in the novel between American men and Mexican señoritas can be seen as a “consolidation of the groups they semi-allegorically represent” (Limón 350). I agree with Limón’s interpretation of the intermarriages between the Mendoza y Soria girls and the Americanos symbolizing both cultures coming together and foreshadowing change. However, I would add that González and Raleigh present the intermarriages as characteristic of the two subcategories of the historical romance genre: fantasy and realism. By analyzing the passion and sexual desire, as well as the political and social changes prevalent in the time period, González and Raleigh are able to fully develop the narrative of a Mexican American historical romance novel. In her book The Historical Romance, Helen Hughes describes how a historical romance novel includes content that not only relates to love and passion, but also advocates for …show more content…

Hughes says about realist romance: The ‘realism’ of the texts invites a reading of both romantic and historical situations which involves an identification with specific social and political values; it may be the assent to these, rather than the details of either the romantic story or, in this case, the invented history, which may be remembered as ‘true’ by the reader. (Hughes 24) Realist romance allows for the history surrounding the romance to not only feel true but also to encourage social and political changes relevant to the history being covered in the novel

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