Recurring Themes and Techniques in Adelaida García Morales' Narrative

RECURRING THEMES AND TECHNIQUES IN ADELAIDA GARCÍA MORALES’ NARRATIVE by Lourdes Albuixech Southern Illinois University ADELAIDA García Morales published her first short novels, El Sur and Bene, in 1985. Because Víctor Érice’s acclaimed film El Sur, based on García Morales’ novel, predated the novel’s publication, the novel enjoyed almost an immediate success, and many critics turned their attention not only to El Sur and Bene, but also to Morales’ next publication, El silencio de las sirenas, which also appeared in 1985, and which earned the author the prestigious Premio Herralde de novela.1 As many flaps of Morales’ books repeat, she is “una de las novelistas españolas más reconocidas, tanto en España como en el plano internacional, gracias a las muchas traducciones que se han hecho de sus obras.”2 In spite of her popularity both in Spain and abroad, and in spite of the numerous articles that her early works inspired, her later narrative has not yet launched much (needed) critical response. With their “natural” yet lyric style, their short length, and their Gothic suspense , Morales’ works appeal to any reader; however, most include an exceptional array of elements stemming from different traditions and carefully interwoven so as to create a postmodern work. El silencio de las sirenas is a perfect example of such an interpenetration of elements: in it, the past intersects with the present, the oneiric-hypnotic with the daily, fiction with metafiction; a supernatural world coexists with the natural world.3 The Chinese box that Elsa leaves María, in itself a symbol of self-reflexivity, echoes the similarities between the two women and their complementary character since, as Mercedes Mazquirán notes, Elsa is in fact María’s alter ego (478). This complemental function is as well stressed by Coro Malaxecheverría, who sees in the 93 female threesome formed by María, Elsa, and the elderly Matilde a representation of “los tres elementos o cabezas que forman el monstruo (i.e. the siren)” (44). Biruté Ciplijauskaité sees some striking parallels between Elsa’s love story with Agustín Valdés and those love stories encountered in Early Spanish sentimental romance and in German nineteenth-century Liebestod, traditions which Morales subverts and mirrors. As the novel nears and distances from these and other traditions, it nears and distances from itself, achieving a selfparodying effect,4 which is characteristic of postmodern fiction. It is precisely this overlapping of elements found in Morales’ novels that has led different scholars to label her narrative in disparate ways or to underscore several aspects. Thus, in her La novela femenina contemporánea Ciplijauskaité considers Morales’ three inaugural works as part of a lyric modality of feminine first-person narrative which she calls “escritura rebelde” (165-166, 195-199), while Elizabeth Ordóñez highlights their debt to fantastic literature as described by Tzvetan Todorov (Writing Ambiguity 259), and Mazquirán believes they conform to Patricia Waugh’s definition of “metafictional novels” (478). Likewise, many of Morales’ works neatly fit into what Ricardo Gullón calls “novela lírica.”5 Having acknowledged how Morales’ novels resist any unilateral classification , in the next few pages I would like to draw attention to those elements in her novels that give unity to her narrative corpus. The majority of Morales’ novels and novelettes utilize a first person narrator who is also always female.6 This is the case in El Sur (Adriana), Bene (Ángela), El silencio de las sirenas (María), La lógica del vampiro (Elvira), La tía Águeda (Marta), La señorita Medina (Silvia), Historia perversa (Andrea), and El testamento de Regina (Susana). In four of these novels (El Sur, Bene, La señorita Medina, and La tía Águeda) we find adult women recalling their past as young adolescents or children. The protagonists in these four novels have been keeping some past secret (and secrets are ubiquitous in Morales’ writings) they presently need to face. Adriana must understand her feelings towards her father as well as what led him to plummet in order to know herself;7 Ángela has to come to terms with her feelings for Santiago, her brother, and...