UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Recuperating the Bildungsroman in Women's Contemporary Spanish Narratives and Film Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0k00z8rs Author Palomar, Ana Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Recuperating the Bildungsroman in Women’s Contemporary Spanish Narratives and Film DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Spanish by Ana María Palomar Dissertation Committee: Professor Gonzalo Navajas, Chair Associate Professor Laura Hyun Yi Kang Assistant Professor Santiago Morales-Rivera 2015 © 2015 Ana María Palomar DEDICATION To my family whose love and support is endless There are these women’s faces, various as dewprints sequined across my life’s web every grain reflecting a different dawn. The interlace of all my years shudders with such a weight until each pod of moisture bursts, flooding toward the center— that hub of memory, itself unspeakable from which is spoken all that moves us. Robin Morgan, from “The Network of the Imaginary Mother,” Lady of the Beasts ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv CURRICULUM VITAE v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: Configurations, Causes, and Modes of the Bildungsroman 14 Women and Identity 38 Patriarchal and Cultural Shifts 58 CHAPTER 2: Treating the Erotic: Feminism, Language, and Sexuality Discourses 75 The Quest for Love 99 Dichotomies of Spectatorship 112 Gender Role Displacements 126 CHAPTER 3: Recuperating the Past: Women’s Condition in Post-Franco Spain 135 Progressing Towards Transition 173 CHAPTER 4: Conclusion 179 BIBLIOGRAPHY 182 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my faculty committee, Dr. Gonzalo Navajas, Dr. Laura Kang, Dr. Santiago Morales-Rivera, and other UC Irvine professors for their consistent support and motivation, scholarly excellence, and charm with which they teach. I am also grateful to my professors from California State University, Dominguez Hills and California State University, Fullerton, who sparked my interest in research, teaching, and literature. A special thanks to the deceased Dr. Juergen Kempff whose dedication and method of instruction at UC Irvine had a lasting impact on me. Thank you to Professor Amina Yassine whose kindness and commitment to her students extends beyond the classroom. In addition, a heartfelt thanks to Linda Le, Evelyn Flores, and Miriam Torres, who make everything run smoothly in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Office. Thank you to my best friends, Lissett Acuña, Sandra García, Bella Jones, and Brenda Serpas who always believed in me and whom I love and admire deeply. To my former CSUF classmates Jennifer Barajas and Ana Villarreal: ¡Sí se pudo! A huge thank you to my parents, siblings, and family whose love and support is everlasting. iv CURRICULUM VITAE Ana María Palomar EDUCATION 2015 PhD in Spanish, University of California, Irvine 2008 MA in Spanish, California State University, Fullerton 2004 BA in Spanish and Art with Honors, California State University, Dominguez Hills CONFERENCES “Reconstructing the Self in Ana María Moix’s Julia.” 16th Annual Céfiro Conference on Latin American and Iberian Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Texas Tech University. March 26- 28, 2015. “Deconstructing the Female Body in ‘Carmen’: Vicente Aranda’s Film and Prosper Mérimée’s Novella.” Asociación Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispánica, XXII Congreso Anual: Feminismo, Post-Feminismo, Neo-Feminismo. The Claremont Colleges. 10-12 de octubre del 2013. “Cinematic Intimacy in Julio Medem’s Sex and Lucía.” 6th Bi-national Graduate Student Colloquium Literature-Cultural Studies-Linguistics. San Diego State University, San Diego. April 20, 2013. “Treating the Erotic in Rosa Montero’s Te trataré como a una reina and Almudena Grandes’ Las edades de Lulú.” First Annual Spanish Graduate Student Symposium. California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach. March 16, 2012. “Carmen and Tristana: Figures of Free Will and Idealization in Prosper Merimee’s Carmen and Benito Pérez Galdos’s Tristana.” XXXIV International Symposium of Spanish Literature. California State University, Dominguez Hills. Carson. March 10-11, 2011. PUBLICATIONS “Carmen: Gypsy Icon and Subject of Spectacle and Performance in Prosper Mérimée’s novella and Vicente Aranda’s film.” Revista Sin Frontera. Spring 2011. Online link: http://ufsinfrontera.com/academico/ v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Recuperating the Bildungsroman in Women’s Contemporary Spanish Narratives and Film By Ana María Palomar Doctor of Philosophy in Spanish University of California, Irvine, 2015 Professor Gonzalo Navajas, Chair The coming-of-age novel or story exhibits a search for the individual’s meaningful existence within society in conjunction with the attainment of one’s true self. In the years following the Spanish Civil War, Carmen Laforet, Ana María Matute, Mercè Rodoreda, Esther Tusquets and others, published novels of female development that enriched the canon of the Spanish literature. The recent decades have witnessed the publication of a growing number of female formation novels by Lucía Etxebarría, Almudena Grandes, Rosa Montero, as well as many other leading female writers in Spain. This dissertation examines the silenced voice in women’s narrative fiction characterized by modules of the Bildungsroman and aided through cinematic representations. It provides an investigation of patterns in women’s narrative trajectory revolving around configurations of the novel of self-formation and theoretical perspectives on love and eroticism as seen in the novels Nada, El mismo mar de todos los veranos, Julia, Las edades de Lulú, Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes, Primera memoria and the film Elegy. Additionally, I question the interchangeability and reversibility of masculine and feminine traits as demonstrated in the novel Te trataré como a vi una reina and the films Carmen and Lucía y el sexo, proposing that these notions manifest a discord that subverts the hierarchy of hegemonic discourses. I also focus on exploring connections between women’s marginal standing and the overall sense of displacement and uneasiness that trickled into the Spanish Transition period as seen in the novels Cielo nocturno, La plaza del diamante and the film Las trece rosas. Ultimately, the texts and films I have chosen formulate evocations of this relationship in order to explore factual/fiction dividends of the novel of self-discovery. All works have a common divergent interest in the interplay between the attainment of the self that is aided through political or social conflict, while the others deal tangentially with relationships involving gender based perspectives in conjunction with desire and intimacy. vii Introduction It is in the nature of literature to bear witness to the passing of time and events, weaving memories to reveal intricate patterns of those recollections previously hidden among its strands. If it is our intention to give life to those memoirs, then we must call for an active reading in the present; allowing formative processes within a specific present to complete this progression in hopes of finding connections between a generation or time period. Raymond Williams, in Marxism and Literature declares: At different moments in history, and in significantly different ways, the reality and even the primacy of such presences and such processes, such diverse and yet specific actualities, have been powerfully asserted and reclaimed, as in practice of course they are all the time lived. But they are then often asserted as forms themselves, in contention with other known forms: the subjective as distinct from the objective; experience from belief; feeling from thought; the immediate from the general; the personal from the social. (129) The central contention of this study is to expose the silenced voice in women’s narrative fiction characterized by modules of the Bildungsroman and aided through cinematic representations. I have chosen interdisciplinary approaches that engage with and establish the context for the novels and films proper of this module. My study provides an investigation of women’s narrative trajectory revolving around configurations of the novel of formation. My intention is to examine the manifestation of this notion under a contemporary context linked with history of postwar Spain and fiction to adumbrate the parameters of this genre. I am inspired by women’s narrative voice in fiction in conjunction with socio-historical factors of the twentieth century with the hopes of encouraging a revalorization of it. 1 There is no question that the essence of life involves growth, which means change. The crystallization of the Bildungsroman and its trajectory have been widely acknowledged and accepted as an experience that is at its peak during adolescence. The Bildungsroman describes a genre of novels depicting the process of coming of age of a male protagonist in German literature of the eighteenth centuries; one that Leasa Lutes describes as being present: En la infancia y la niñez el ser concibe del mundo completamente como una extensión de su propia existencia, ésta siendo informada de un conjunto de ideas nacidas de lo real tanto como de lo ilusorio. El adolescente toma conciencia de las diferencias entre sí mismo y el Otro, entre la realidad y la ilusión,