En pos de la ilusión (1940), a first-person narrative by another prolific and popular author of novelas rosa, María Mercedes Ortoll, is addressed to “muchachas”—female readers of marriageable age (generously extended to early forties) who, according to the Dominican García Figar, dreamed of nothing but “estrenar un vestido” (“wearing a new dress”), “cazar un novio” (“finding [but literally, “hunting”] someone to marry”), and “criar un hijo” (“raising a child”) (69). Viewed in this light, En pos constitutes a guide in its own right on how to obtain a husband. Circulated at a time when the ranks of single women anxious to avoid the ignominy of spinsterhood had significantly surpassed the number of available male candidates, the novel treats marriage less as a sacrament than as a shared concern, the successful resolution of which requires women to use methods that are at odds with the institutionalized, bride-in-waiting image endorsed by the official arbiters of feminine mores.

The conduct manuals and prescriptive texts considered thus far had addressed questions of female socialization from the moral high ground assumed by the clergy and leading members of the women's political organization. However, along with such attempts at national and pastoral care as Emilio Enciso Viana's La muchacha en el noviazgo (The Young Woman in Courtship) (1947), Francisco Esteve Blanes’ Hacia tu ideal (Toward Your Ideal) (1939), the Jesuit Angel Ayala's Consejos a las jóvenes (Advice To Young Women) (1947) or the aforementioned Dominican García Figar's ¿Por qué te casas? ¿Para qué te casas? ¿Con quién te casas? (Why Do You Marry? To What End Do You Marry? Whom Do You Marry?) (1944), to mention but a few, there thrived another current of feminine literature of pronouncedly didactic, albeit less edifying content. Its unorthodox appeal consisted in extending the directives for the practice of quintessential feminine virtues to ostensibly practical advice for achieving that single most sought-after condition without which no woman could rightfully consider herself happy: marriage.