This dissertation assesses the inscription of female desire in the context of literature written in Spanish throughout the twentieth century in the works of Delmira Agustini, Juana de Ibarbourou, Carmen Laforet, Carmen Olle and Lucia Etxebarria. In considering these five authors I pay attention to publications in the Spanish language that need to be understood within the field of Hispanism and within gender or feminist studies. I argue that despite their many differences, all of the authors share approaches that transgress the boundaries of heteronormative discourse with regards to the definition, expression, and understanding of female desire. I use a theoretical framework that traces the development of the theories of female desire of feminist thinkers including Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous, Monique Wittig, Adrienne Rich, Judith Butler, Candace West, Don Zimmerman, and Sarah Fenstermaker, and I include a discussion of postfeminism in the context of the late twentieth century by looking at the theories of Angela McRobbie as they pertain to Lucia Etxebarria. I develop a concept of what I define as the "mis-citation" of normative gender and desire in literature and the way that through mis-citing these norms these works create a space of agency for the expression of alternative desires and genders. This study in part follows the massive changes with regards to the female desiring subject that occurred over the span of the twentieth century in the context of literature written in Spanish, transformations that were advanced by these five innovative authors.