Female subjects in Carmen Martín Gaite’s New York texts

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines 3 of Carmen Martín Gaite’s texts that unfold in New York: her posthumously published collage notebook Visión de Nueva York (2005), the poem “Todo es un cuento roto en Nueva York” (1983) and the short novel Caperucita en Manhattan (1990). Through the critical lenses of Lefebvre, de Certeau, Baudrillard, Wilson and others, this paper explores how Martín Gaite depicts women’s spatial practice, as they make their way out of interior spaces to access urban space. By focusing on collages in Visión de Nueva York that contain windows or personal photographs, one can observe that, as time passes, the author’s assemblages communicate an increased sense of belonging after her initial anxiety about inhabiting a new city. Connections can be drawn among specific pages of Visión de Nueva York and the poem “Todo es un cuento roto en Nueva York”, where it is possible to see how the author develops ideas that she will later use in Caperucita en Manhattan. Scholars to date have paid little critical attention to Martín Gaite’s poetry, and this study attempts to fill in this gap by analyzing a poem that can be read as a precursor to her short novel.