Wife, Whore, Witch: The Portrayal of Violence in the Works of Mercè Rodoreda

Abstract

In society literature has the important function of registering, transmitting, and even creating ideology. Within the pages of a text, the cultural conventions and practices are scrutinized to either be legitimized and perpetuated, or rejected and rectified. The import of this responsibility weighs on the minds of writers. Francoise Lionnet, a French literary critic, believes, “Women writers are often especially aware of their task as producers of images that both participate in the dominant representations of their culture and simultaneously undermine and subvert those images by offering a re-vision of familiar scripts” (132). The traditional ideology assigned to women of wife, mother, and daughter are subtly undermined in the work of Merce Rodoreda. Josefina Hess, a Spanish literary critic, acknowledges this demythification process: En las novelas de Rodoreda se observa la presentacion de personajes femeninos cuyas existencias estan en conflicto con los modelos de madre y esposa propuestos por la sociedad tradicional. Temas como la maternidad, el aborto, la prostitucion, el abuso fisico y sicologico de la mujer, son presentados con realismo percibiendose claramente una posicion ideologica que intenta romper el silencio e iniciar cambios respecto a la mujer y su rol en la sociedad. (281) [In Rodoreda’s novels one observes the presentation of female characters whose existences are in conflict with the traditional role models of mother and wife proposed by society.