Feminist Rhetoric of Gendered Insanity in Alba Ambert’s “Rage Is a Fallen Angel” and Estela Portillo Trambley’s “The Paris Gown”

The two narrators in Alba Ambert’s “Rage Is a Fallen Angel” (1997) and Estela Portillo Trambley’s “The Paris Gown” (1975) are caught in similar conflicts of being accused of insanity for failing to conform to the gender norms imposed on women by men, thus indicating that sanity is a gendered social construct. Both narrators make particular use of memory in understanding and constructing their identities through feminist rhetoric and consciousness. By naming patriarchal culture and the men who uphold it as the perpetrators, the stories critique patriarchy and the inimical effects that misogyny has on women who fail or refuse to conform to the limited options men present them with.