Rosaura A Las Diez

While most scholarship and criticism published about Rosaura a las diez has been in Spanish, two key articles are available to English-speaking readers. The first, “Camilo’s Closet: Sexual Camouflage in Denevi’s Rosaura a las diez” by Herbert J. Brant (Hispanic Issues, Vol. 13, 1996), has been highly influential in contemporary interpretations of Camilo and his relationship to gender and sexuality. The second, “Making sense of others: The use of biographical statements in Rosaura a las diez” by Teófilo Espada-Brignoni (Advances in Language and Literary Studies Vol. 9, 2018), recenters the text’s philosophical roots in order to understand its formulation of individual experience. Both articles can provide readers with insights into the book that may not be obvious upon first reading.

In “Camilo’s Closet,” Brant argues that Camilo, the novel’s central figure, is a closeted gay man. He arrives at this claim by noting the frequent passages that call into question Camilo’s gender and sexuality, such as Mrs. Milagros’s first impression of him. She notices that Camilo “take[s] on the ridiculous appearance of a man wearing high heels, as they day dukes and marquises used to do in olden times, when, with all those bows and wigs and silk stockings, they all looked like women” (8).