La sombra de la madre: un mito materno en la novela de mujeres
Autor
Concha, Mª Ángeles de laFecha
1992Resumen
In this paper I attempt to explore the discursive construction of
feminine subjectivity in literature and myth. The authority of myth, hardly
questioned until fairly recent times, and the interpretive theories that
reinforce the ideology from which it arises and which in turn it contributes
to uphold, are particularly evident in the Oedipus myth.
Through a brief review of the role played by the mother in fiction by
female authors in the 18th an 19th centuries and a more detailed analysis of
significant contemporary novels I try to explore women's absorption and
internalization of a fixed gendered identity that has ascribed them for a long
time to the realm of the private and the family, and has been the cause of no
small anxiety and frustration.
Being myth embedded in language, I try to show how any attempt to
uncover and expose its meaning necessarily implies the exposure of the
discursive practices that have largely signified and reinscribed those social
gendered practices.