Female authorship and the feminine voice was first recognized in the second half of the nineteenth century, by a previously exclusive, patriarchal literary scene. As a critical attitude towards male focalization and stereotypical portrayals of women debunked the myth that the female writer had nothing of value to say, the female perspective seized to be an ornamental, illustrative element in fiction. This change, in conjunction with psychology emerging as a science in the early twentieth century, brought about some of the most rounded female literary characters we know today: flesh and blood women with complex personalities who are very much in charge of their own fate, ideally. In less ideal instances, where these characters are met with some sort of oppression, they still appear to assert their will via interaction with other characters, or through behaviors which are often frowned upon by society or their immediate surroundings. The trope of the madwoman has been present in literature in many different forms, and has been the subject of scholarly debate, since irrational characters allow for free interpretation. In this paper I will take a look at the literary examples of an apparent connection between madness and disobedience in female literary characters. I am going to apply these findings to two notable female characters in contemporary Mexican fiction, namely Susana San Juan from Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo and Tita De La Garza from Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, so as to frame the context of this research by two major pillars of Mexican magical realism.