El cuarto de atrás de Carmen Martín Gaite como parodia de la novela rosa

CRESPO, NATALIA

Alba de America

University of California

Lugar: California; Año: 2013

0888-3181

In The Back Room (El cuarto de atrás, 1978), a Spanish novel of the Post War Era written by Carmen Martín Gaite, we find a critical re-vision of certain cultural discourses of gender. These discourses ?such as the documents of the ?Femenine Section? of the Spanish fascist organization (?Sección Femenina? de Falange), some popular refrains, and romance novels by Carmen de Icaza and Corín Tellado?served as propaganda for the conservative model of womanhood during the decades of the Franco?s dictatorship. They were in fact crucial ideological pieces in the prescriptions of gendered comportment that the dictatorship imposed. The Back Room is a hybrid novel that, shortly after Franco?s death, rewrites these conservative cultural discourses of Francoism, as well as certain folk pieces historically considered ?Low Culture? (such as the popular songs by Conchita Piquer). My paper analyzes the many ways in which The Back Room gives us a critical perspective on the construction of gender and ideology during the years of the Franco dictatorship. For this, I pay special attention to some of Martín Gaite?s recurrent literary devices: parody, satire, stylization, and irony. I propose that, through these aesthetic tools, in The Back Room Martín Gaite helps us to critically-understand the mechanisms by which social constraints were imposed on women during Franco?s dictatorship.