From Cortázar to the cinema. Glenda Jackson and the evolution of feminine imaginary in the 70s

Abstract

The present work focuses on the reading of Cortázar’s story, “Queremos tanto a Glenda” (1980), with the aim of bringing up the theme of this story, which revolves around the fanaticism of a group of characters by the actress English Glenda Jackson. Beyond Cortázar’s fiction, this story will lead us to question the evolution of the female archetype in the cinema of the 70s, based on the interpretations of this artist in two of her most outstanding films, Women in love (1969) and A Touch of class (1973). We will take as methodological guidelines to support our analysis, some of the most significant voices that support feminist theories and the historiographic field of cinema and women. In this way, critics such as Annette Kuhn, Laura Mulvey, Teresa de Lauretis and Giulia Colaizzi, among other authors, come to consolidate our ideas about the literary character and the transformation of the female imaginary. By carrying out the reading of the story of Cortázar and the study of the female character of Glenda Jackson in two of her films, we can question the changes in cultural ideology of the female archetype to which devices such as celluloid, capable of influencing the de-subjectivization of power relations between genders.