La construcción de la identidad femenina a través del espacio narrativo en Inés y la alegría de Almudena Grandes

Abstract

One research advantage of the feminist literary theory is that it offers the possibility of having literature portray a female subject. Relatedly, we will analyze the influence of the narrative space in the novel Inés y la alegría by Almudena Grandes in the construction of the protagonist’s female identity. We
will thus base our work on what is often referred to as Feminism of Difference, following the theory of the symbolic order by Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, and the theory of the separate spheres, which assigns the private space of a home to women, leaving men in charge of society. In a similar vein, we will tackle the importance of the narrative space for female identity construction, following Valles Calatrava’s space theory. We should put forward that it is through literary analysis that we can observe how gender identities have been traditionally constructed through a socialization process that mainly responds to male roles as well as to a patriarchal society. As a consequence, we will side with the view that the environment plays a key role in terms of the deconstruction of these premises and the consequential new construction of female roles with a self identity.