Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of Gender Discrimination in El cuarto de atrás

Abstract

Main objective. This article examines the narrator-protagonist's discourses on discrimination against women in the context of the first period of Franco's dictatorship in the novel The Back Room by C. Martín Gaite and answers the research question: What are the author's discursive strategies to represent gender discrimination in the text? Methodology. The study examines these discourses through a Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis based on two discursive levels (macro-strategies and micro-strategies). Results. The analysis has shown a series of discursive strategies employed by the author to portrait discrimination against women in the text, such as the use of certain discursive themes (direct and indirect comments from society and the institutions), subgenres (romantic novel, autobiography, memoir) or intertexts (cinema, music). Discussion and Conclusions. The study reveals the author's criticism of the repression and the monological gender models established by the Regime through her reaction to the power structures (the Sección Femenina). The narrator offers an alternative story to the official one and she is the voice of a generation of women who had to mentally escape to resist the Spanish post war propaganda.