LA EVOLUCIÓN DE LA VOZ FEMENINA EN EL CUENTO ESPAÑOL ENTRE LOS GRUPOS GENERACIONALES DE “LAS HIJAS DE LA POSGUERRA” Y “LAS HIJAS DE LA DEMOCRACIA”

Leonor Ceballos Fernández, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Document Type Article

A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Major: Modern Languages and Literatures (Spanish). Under the Supervision of Professor Catherine Nickel.
Lincoln, Nebraska: August, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Leonor Ceballos Fernández.

Abstract

Social and political changes in the last decades of the Twentieth Century have had an enormous impact on Spanish women. After Franco's 1975 death, Spain became a parliamentary democracy and women recovered many of the rights they had prior to Franco's dictatorship. Spanish literature since 1975 reflects this increased equality, and women's texts now receive greater commercial and critical attention. I focus on short stories by two groups of Spanish women writers. In texts by a group I designate as the “Daughters of the Dictatorship”, the protagonists confront personal, professional and existential problems, but they rarely go beyond identifying their dilemma to find a solution. The protagonists created by a second group that I call the “Daughters of Democracy” confront similar problems but often solve them by a process of speaking or writing about them. Rather than resign themselves to continued self sacrifice and suffering, the protagonists of the second group begin to change their situation by verbalizing their frustrations and taking action to improve their circumstances. I identify the evolution of themes and narrative techniques in the works of the “Daughters of the Dictatorship”, including authors such as Mercè Rodoreda, Carmen Martín Gaite, Ana María Matute, Ana María Navales, Marina Mayoral and Lourdes Ortiz. All these writers were born before or during the Franco dictatorship, a factor that influenced both their lives and their literary works. The “Daughters of Democracy” group includes writers such as Isabel-Clara Simó, Montserrat Roig, Carmen Riera, Almudena Grandes, Cristina Cerrada, Mercedes Abad y Care Santos. They all began publishing after 1975. Although their texts explore many of the same kinds of crisis confronting women, they use a wider array of literary techniques and openly defy the norms of feminine writing imposed during the dictatorship. The second group's short stories treat topics such as frustrated teenagers, domestic spaces, maternity, marriage and the sex life of women, but they do so in a more defiant and subversive way, reflecting their status as women in a post-dictatorship environment. Their texts often offer ways to cope with or resolve the problems that plague their female protagonists.

The text of this dissertation is in Spanish.

Advisor: Catherine Nickel