In this volume, Paulina Rivero investigates the causes of a strange phenomenon: the absence of heroic female figures in literature and the impact of that absence on women's lives. She at the same time confronts this fact with the existence of heroic women in real life. Why don't literary heroines reflect flesh and blood heroines? The response attempted in this book shows that the consequences of the case may be more dangerous than one might at first believe.
This is not a feminism text, nor a self-help text, nor a literary or philosophical study. It is at once all that and more; also, even, a tribute to Spanish-speaking poets.

This third edition, corrected, includes the comment that the author's friend and fellow philosopher Carlos Pereda wrote on the occasion of the first edition of this book that motivated his solidarity with Paulina's desire to contribute, as she declares, to "illuminating "the path of women towards a better future, which encourages them to take one more step towards the adventure of creating a new way of being."

Another “way of being”, which, for the Uruguayan/Mexican philosopher, “is none other than the old ideal of being an agent, at least of assuming oneself from time to time as the cause of many of one's actions, an old ideal that constantly it has been denied to women and, perhaps more covertly, but no less effectively, also to the majority of men.”