Observant, opinionated and urban chronicler: Delie Rouge and her irruption in essay writing and the women’s press in Chile

Abstract

This article examines the writing by Delie Rouge who played an active role in the feminist literary and political scene of the first half of the 20th century in Chile. On the one hand, the article aims to reconstruct her intellectual career illuminating her struggle to fit in the literary field. On the other, her pioneer incursion in the essay is addressed by examining the transgressive nature that its development at the beginning of the 20th century implies. Finally, the article focuses on the analysis of her chronicles published in the feminist political press of the 1930s. In them, the voice of an urban chronicler unfolds, challenging the boundaries associated to the private/feminine and public/masculine, it moves through the streets and enters the slums of the “barbarian city”. From this space, and assuming the intellectual role, she makes visible and publicly denounces the exclusion affecting the modern city’s marginalised groups, particularly the situation of women.