Eternal Feminine Behind Narrative Space: Mararía and Lanzarote’s Landscape

Abstract

Over the years, literary speech, predominantly masculine, has created a spectrum made of literary images around the woman. One of the representations which is part of her imaginery is the literary landscape. For this research, we have compared the literary woman with this concept, the literary landscape, according to a territorial perspective of woman’s character and, therefore, to the real one. In order to show this relation, we have used the concept of simulacra (Baudrillard, 1978) and its real repercussions. Then, we have developed the link between the literary representation of the island in its own landscape and the literary interpretation of woman, by using the term land-as-woman (Kolodny, 1973). As an example, we have analyzed the testimonies which build the novel Mararía (1975), by Rafael Arozarena. Finally, we have concluded that feminizing the environment reinforces the gender roles which take part of the eternal feminine, so the real woman, as well as that conservative governments, such as the Spanish dictatorship after the civil war, the woman’s body, due to its procreative potencial, belongs to the system as the soil belongs to the country.