Conceptualizing Gender and Nation in Franco's Spain
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IMAGINED MASCULINITIES: CONCEPTUALIZING GENDER AND NATION IN FRANCO’S SPAIN Jared Patten Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Indiana University February 2015 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee ______________________________ Dr. Melissa Dinverno, Ph.D. ______________________________ Dr. Maryellen Bieder, Ph.D. ______________________________ Dr. Reyes Vila-Belda, Ph.D. ______________________________ Dr. Brenda Weber, Ph.D. January 12, 2015 ii Copyright © 2015 Jared Patten iii Acknowledgements First, I want to express my gratitude to my advisor, Melissa Dinverno, whose insightful feedback on my project throughout its various stages was instrumental in helping me to develop and see it through to fruition. I am especially grateful for her support, patience, time, and encouragement (I always left our meetings feeling energized and excited!), which have helped guide me to a successful conclusion of my graduate studies. As my mentor, her support has challenged and enabled me to sharpen my writing and hone my critical analyses. I also want to thank the other members of my dissertation committee, Maryellen Bieder, Reyes Vila-Belda, and Brenda Weber, who have all provided their support and encouragement on and throughout the duration of this project. From taking their courses to working with them on the dissertation, my committee members have believed in my potential as a scholar and have encouraged me to realize the goals and objectives that I set forth when I began my graduate studies at Indiana University. I will always be grateful for having the opportunity to have worked with these most talented and inspiring people. I want to thank, too, the Indiana University’s College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, as well as the Program for Cultural Cooperation and Spain’s Ministry of Culture for their generous financial support. The assistance they provided facilitated my graduate work and dissertation research both here and in Spain. A special thank you, as well, to the staff of the Spanish and Portuguese department for their support in many behind-the-scenes matters. Lastly, I want to thank my family, friends, and my many study/writing buddies iv for their loving support and encouragement, which helped keep me grounded throughout this challenging and rewarding process. v Jared Patten IMAGINED MASCULINITIES: CONCEPTUALIZING GENDER AND NATION IN FRANCO’S SPAIN This dissertation explores both the notion of masculinity and the interplay between discourses of masculinity and nation in Spanish novels produced during the Franco dictatorship. To date, it is the first to examine issues concerning masculinity/ies exclusively within the temporal bounds of the Franco regime and does so by examining six novels by both officially aligned and dissident writers: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Carmen de Icaza, Carmen Martín Gaite, Mercè Rodoreda, Luis Martín-Santos and Juan Marsé. By foregrounding how masculinities were constructed and contested in the novels that I analyze, my project identifies how authors envisioned the use of both normative and non-normative models of masculinity in processes of nation building. Second, looking at how various authors conceptualized gender and nation in their works, my project presents a more complex vision of masculinity/ies in the selected novels and does so, in part, by providing a more specific and in-depth analysis of “masculinity” itself. I illustrate how, despite the modernization of the Francoist state and Spain’s increasing participation in the international marketplace, traditional notions of masculinity continued to be relied upon not only as a means to ground male dominance and the hegemony of a traditional mode of masculinity, but, in so doing, to legitimize and instantiate state control over the Spanish nation. Thirdly, by exploring tensions between officially desired/prescribed gender roles and the reality that gender is, in fact, always in a state of flux. My thesis draws critical attention to the notion of crisis as an underlying vi commonality in literary representations of masculinity, which leads me to propose that the notion of anxiety may very well shape contemporary concepts of masculinity. ______________________________ Dr. Melissa Dinverno, Ph.D. ______________________________ Dr. Maryellen Bieder, Ph.D. ______________________________ Dr. Reyes Vila-Belda, Ph.D. ______________________________ Dr. Brenda Weber, Ph.D. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 Ideal Gender Models of the Early Franco Dictatorship: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester’s Javier Mariño (1943) and Carmen de Icaza’s La fuente enterrada (1947) .......................30 Chapter 2 Masculinity and the Cooptation of Female Labor: Carmen Martín Gaite’s Entre visillos (1957) and Mercè Rodoreda’s La calle de las Camelias (1966) .....................................109 Chapter 3 Contested Masculinities in Luis Martín-Santos’s Tiempo de silencio (1961) and Juan Marsé’s Últimas tardes con Teresa (1966) ......................................................................218 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................331 Works Cited ....................................................................................................................336 Curriculum Vitae ................................................................................................................. viii INTRODUCTION At its broadest scope, my dissertation explores both the notion of masculinity and the interplay between constructions of masculinity and national identities in Spanish novels produced during the Franco dictatorship. To date, it is the first to examine issues concerning masculinity/ies exclusively within the temporal bounds of the Franco regime and does so by examining six novels by both officially aligned and dissident writers: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Carmen de Icaza, Carmen Martín Gaite, Mercè Rodoreda, Luis Martín-Santos, and Juan Marsé. Selecting texts published in distinct periods of the regime’s history, my project illustrates how each of the authors conceives of an economy of gender relations in which a traditional notion of masculinity is promulgated in order to legitimize a particular citizenry, and considers the way in which the characters negotiate and question those norms. I illustrate how, in spite of the modernization of the Francoist state and Spain’s increasing participation in the international marketplace, traditional notions of masculinity continued to be relied upon not only as a means to ground male dominance and the hegemony of a particular mode of masculinity, but, in so doing, to legitimize and instantiate state control over the Spanish nation. My analyses of texts is guided by several questions: is there a difference in the way in which politically conservative texts and more politically neutral or mainstream texts portray masculinities; what are the differences and similarities regarding the representation of masculinities in novels produced at different moments in the dictatorship; is an idealized and/or hegemonic model of masculinity present across these texts and, if so, is this model static or does it evolve over time; and, lastly, what strategies or tactics do the characters employ as a means to negotiate their own gender identity vis-à-vis a particular cultural norm? 1 Ultimately, by exploring tensions between officially prescribed gender roles and the reality that gender is, in fact, always in a state of flux, my thesis draws critical attention to the notion of crisis as an underlying commonality in these literary representations of masculinity, which leads me to propose that the notion of anxiety may very well shape contemporary concepts of masculinity. I will begin with an analysis of Gonzalo Torrente Ballester’s Javier Mariño. Historia de una conversión (1943) and Carmen de Icaza’s La fuente enterrada (1947). Published in the first decade of the Franco dictatorship, each novel, at first glance, seems to promote gender models that coincide with Francoist discourses of gender. As I will show in chapter one, these novels in part embody the regime’s attempt to regulate its citizenry through the promotion of traditional concepts of gender and the concurrent marginalization of those models deviating from the status quo. Both novels call attention to their protagonist’s transformation and realization of a gender model coinciding with official discourses at the time. Nonetheless, I argue that, in so doing, each inadvertently delegitimizes the essentialized notions of gender that it attempts to promote. I ultimately read both novels, then, as unwittingly betraying the legitimacy of traditional concepts of gender by highlighting the performative nature of gender itself. In chapter two, I first analyze Carmen Martín Gaite’s Entre visillos (1957), demonstrating how the novel establishes ideal masculine and feminine gender models, what those models entail, and how the novel’s co-protagonists, Natalia and Pablo, are constructed in order to provide a critique of those ideal gender models. Through the two co-protagonists,