Tainted genders: Discourses of power and parenthood in Spanish drama (1908-1936).

The purpose of this study is to investigate the image of woman as presented on the stage during the period 1908-1936 by the following Spanish male and female playwrights: Federico Garcia Lorca, Jacinto Benavente y Martinez, Ramon Maria del Valle-Inclan, Halma Angelico (Margarita Francisca Clar Margarit), Concha Espina, Angelico del Diablo (Maria Palomeras Mallofre) and Maria Teresa Borragan. During this period, a curious dynamic arose due to the prevalence of female leadership within the theatrical companies of the day, the subsequent incorporation of major female roles into plays written by canonical male writers and the public dialogue on the true nature of woman. This dialogue upheld the notion of a hybrid characterization of woman, one who displayed both a sweet, passive side and a corrupt, evil one. This thesis argues that these culturally dominant tropes appear to be at odds with one another in the dramas, and are essential to the construction of subject positions made available to women through the female protagonists in the plays. This hybrid characterization of woman complicates any evaluation of her overall representativeness or authenticity with regard to both expected social and gendered behaviors. Drawing on contemporary theories of performance and feminism and more traditional theories of psychoanalysis, character and ideology, I assess the presence of these cultural tropes within the selected literary texts and consider the effect of these tropes and of the characters themselves on the perceptions of readers and spectators. As hybrids who both comply with and challenge societal norms that dictate behavior appropriate for women, they consequentially effect to taint what appear to be absolute notions of gender in Spanish society.PhDCommunication and the ArtsLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsModern languageRomance literatureSocial SciencesTheaterWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131108/2/9825356.pd