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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese REFIGURING LITERARY FEMINISM IN SPAIN: THE SPLINTERING OF FEMALE IDENTITY IN THE CONTEMPORARY PENINSULAR NOVEL A Dissertation in Spanish by Antonia L. Delgado-Poust © 2011 Antonia L. Delgado-Poust Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2011 The dissertation of Antonia L. Delgado-Poust was reviewed and approved* by the following: Matthew J. Marr Associate Professor of Spanish Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee William R. Blue Professor of Spanish Cheryl Glenn Liberal Arts Research Professor of English and Women’s Studies Guadalupe Martí-Peña Assistant Professor of Spanish Chip Gerfen Professor of Spanish Linguistics Head of the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT Literary Feminism in Spain: The Splintering of Female Identity in the Contemporary Peninsular Novel This dissertation presents a two-fold and interrelated analysis: first, it examines the correspondence between an insecure, splintered female identity and a misunderstanding of the fundamentals of feminist thought as represented in the contemporary Peninsular novel, and second, it establishes the need for a recuperation and revision of female and feminist histories. Employing Spain’s thirty-six years of Francoist repression as a backdrop to their narratives, the novelists considered here underscore the chronic suppression of historical “truths” still prevalent in the post-Franco and post-Transition eras by emphasizing the silencing of female perspectives and experience, accordingly perpetuating the oppression of women in the present. Luisa Castro’s La segunda mujer (2006), Rosa Montero’s La hija del Caníbal (1997), Espido Freire’s Melocotones helados (1999), and Maria de la Pau Janer’s Las mujeres que hay en mí (2002) carefully relate the deliberate suppression of recent—national, familial, and specifically female—history to an existing crisis in women’s identity. Each woman exhibits a problematic unfamiliarity with the past that affects insecurity and an inner conflict in the character. This struggle is a profound one that is manifested through a splintering or splitting of consciousness, a lack of compatibility between mind and body, mistaken identities, and an overall sense of confusion regarding each woman’s sense of self. Although the female subject has been the center of considerable critical attention in recent years, very few studies have focused exclusively on the correlative relationship existing among a palpable crisis in female identity, the collective amnesia of Spain’s Transition to democracy, and twenty-first-century Spain’s impetus to recover and re-vision an ignored female memory and history so as to make sense of the present. It is with iv the aim of filling this apparent void in contemporary Peninsular literary studies that I embark on this project. The present study would argue that the novels all provide significant commentary on the experience of women at the brink of twenty-first-century Spanish society and that they characterize women as being unaware of their personal histories and present identities. The crises the characters experience are often provoked and intensified by androcentric practices and institutions—domestic violence, marriage and pregnancy at a young age, archaic and oppressive religious rituals, and the general subjugation of women. The first two chapters consider female subjects who are writers by trade, yet temporarily abandon and then return to the narrative process to assert and reinvent themselves as they piece together the many fragments that constitute their identity. The splintering of identity is not only visible in the fragmented narrative structure of the novels and the implied texts of the protagonists but in the characters’ psyche and material body as well. The first chapter outlines the effects of domestic abuse on the protagonist and the tendency of physical and emotional violence to function as a simultaneously destructive and creative force that is capable of redefining and reformulating female subjectivity. Instances of violence compel the protagonist to locate and generate a response to her precarious situation, which eventually results in a reconstruction of identity and a feminist consciousness. The consecutive chapters deal much more explicitly with the persistence of the past in the present and with the protagonists’ desire to revisit and recover suppressed secrets from their personal past. In the second chapter, I analyze the connection Montero establishes between the reworking and recovery of historiographic material from Spain’s pre- and post-Civil War eras and the rewriting of personal history and the self. I, too, consider the scarred and splintered female body as a site v of personal and traumatic memory that the protagonist reads and re-writes as if it were a text that reveals certain painful truths from her life experiences. The third and fourth chapters revisit the problem of mistaken, blurred identities, and a splintering of consciousness reminiscent of the “Female Gothic” mode. Both chapters address the spectral return of the past—manifest in the presence of ghosts, oppressive silences, and the amnesic process that characterized the transition to democracy in Spain—which underscores the notion that history perpetually repeats itself in the present. The reader frequently senses that very little has changed, and that progress has not been made, particularly in terms of female experience, which appears to mirror the struggles of previous generations of women. My analyses of Freire and Janer’s texts consider the ways in which the past and the spectral intertwine in a discourse that explores the tensions between remembrance and oblivion, as experienced by the contemporary female subject. The remnants and ghosts of the past indicate the presence of a repressed (female) history that has been kept from the protagonists, thereby inciting identity confusion in the young women. This dissertation will conclude that the misunderstanding or ignorance of feminist thought relates to the silencing and forgetting of a collective Spanish women’s history, not only during the Franco era, but throughout and beyond the nation’s transition to democracy as well. Through their respective engagements with literary or artistic production, these female characters seek to simultaneously recuperate and revise their personal histories and identities so as to make reparations to the previous generations of women who were not afforded an audible voice. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..................................................................................................... vii Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 Wounded Body, Splintered Self: Luisa Castro’s La segunda mujer and Contemporary Spanish Feminism.................................................................................... 46 Chapter 2 Re-Writing the Body, Consuming the Other, and Re-Membering the Self: Rosa Montero’s La hija del Caníbal and Rhetorical Cannibalism ........................................... 92 Chapter 3 Re-Fashioning the “Female Gothic”: Awakened Ghosts, Mistaken Identities, and Multiple Selves in Espido Freire’s Melocotones helados ......................................... 141 Chapter 4 The Ghosts of Identities Past: María de la Pau Janer’s Las mujeres que hay en mí and the Feminist or Mallorcan Uncanny..................................................................... 196 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 245 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................. 257 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation advisor, Matthew J. Marr, for the immense amount of patience, time, support, and understanding he has granted me throughout this entire process. His prompt, diligent, and insightful feedback on the countless versions of each chapter is truly what helped to move this project forward, especially when my motivation and confidence were at all time lows. Without his unwavering guidance, inspiration, and encouragement, I am certain that this study would not be half as good as it is, and for all of this, I will always be indebted to him. I would also like to thank the members of my committee, William R. Blue, Cheryl Glenn, and Guadalupe Martí-Peña for their time, support, and helpful observations and references, which have inspired me to consider various other, unexplored avenues in my research. I am very grateful to the Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese and the College of the Liberal Arts for granting me a a full year without teaching obligations so that I could concentrate on my research. This support was instrumental in helping me advance with my dissertation. I must thank my friends and family for their continued support over the last few years. I am very lucky to have such generous and understanding friends in my life— friends who never gave me a hard time for missing bridal and baby showers, birthday celebrations or for being M.I.A. for weeks (or months) on end. The combination of sporadic weekend visits and