Ecos de un pasado, elementos neo-góticos en la narrativa de Adelaida García Morales

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2012-05

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Abstract

Adelaida García Morales’s narrative maintains an important connection with the history of the Spaniard people. The natural and easy flow of her writing seems to depict her narrative as simple; however, upon close look readers will discover a deeper content. A narrative that shows the Spaniard women’s position during difficult decades, dark and hard times that allows the readers to see the challenges they had to overcome. The main goal of this study is to present her literary production as one with Neo-Gothic characteristics. In this way, her narrative-El sur seguido de Bene (1983), El silencio de las sirenas (1985),La lógica del vampiro (1990),Las mujeres de Héctor (1994), La tía Águeda (1995), Nasmiya (1996), Mujeres solas (1996), El accidente (1997), La señorita Medina (1997), El secreto de Elisa (2001), Una historia perversa (2001), El testamento de Regina (2001)-will be presented along with critics who consider some of her novels as influenced by Gothic narrative as well as critics who consider some of her novels with a distinct Neo-Gothic hint. It is during the post-Franco era that different female writers’ novels portrayed a peculiar characteristic, the presence of diverse Neo-Gothic elements. Adelaida García Morales is one of them. Although her plots are packed with ghosts, evil people, mystery, murders and suicides, her women characters are assigned the main position through roles such as protagonist and narrator in almost all the cases. The female characters do not live submissively in far away castles, they behave according to the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries and some of them have jobs. Secrets and taboos pervade the stories evolving in resolutions or in a more darker secret. There are no happy endings and the characters learn to survive their experiences. In this sense, her narrative reflects a clear influence of the Neo-Gothic sub-genre, and this study analyses this connection. Adelaida García Morales does not always provide answers to all questions and some times, strategically, gives readers the choice to decide what would happen next. Her literary work comes as a result of the liberty female writers enjoyed in contemporary Spain.

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Keywords

Gothic fiction (Literary genre), Spanish, Morales, Adelaida García, El sur y Bene, El silencio de las sirenas

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