Mujeres contra la desmemoria. Un estudio comparativo de los personajes femeninos en El lápiz del carpintero e Inés y la alegría

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to verify if there has been any change in the treatment of female characters in novels about the Spanish Civil War, coinciding with the so called Boom of the Recovery of Historical Memory. In the late 90s emerged different social movements in Spain demanding the recovery of the collective memory during the Civil War and the Franco regime. From that time, many writers were interested in the subject, and began to publich numerous novels on the Spanish Civil War. Many of these novels were written by women, and many of them had women as main characters. In this essay we have compared the treatment of female characters in Inés y la Alegría by Almudena Grandes, and El lápiz del carpintero by Manuel Rivas. The study reveals that the novel by Almudena Grandes has a clear intention to show the life of one of many women who suffered the consequences of the Civil War. In the novel, the protagonist is also the narrator of the story. In the novel written by Rivas, the important issue is to show a relationship, and the reader is not provided with many details about the female character. The result of this essay can no be generalized due to the study's limitations of space and time of the study. However, the study highlights the importance of literature in the recovery of collective memory and can be the basis for future studies to analyze the role of women writers in the recovery of women's testimonies during the Civil War and the Franco regime.