Role Constraints versus Self-Identity in La tejedora de sueños and Anillos para una dama

Role Constraints versus Self-Identity in La tejedora de sueiios and Anillos para una dama ELIZABETH s. ROGERS "I was attracted to Penelope as an image because I had always believed her situation as the wife of Ulysses to be one of the most challenging of Greek mythology." This statement by Naomi E.S. Griffiths elucidates the source of the title ofher work Penelope's Web: Some Perceptions ofWomen in European and Canadian Society. She further explains her use of Penelope as a symbol of woman by stating that, she "was a woman trying desperately to achieve a balance between what she wanted, what she could obtain, and what the immediate circumstances pennitted her to obtain.'" In this study I would like to elaborate on this dilemma of role demands versus personal desires as it relates to two twentieth-century Spanish dramas! While both of these dramas are based on the mythic stories of legendary heroes, Ulysses and the Cid, the focus is nevertheless not on the heroes themselves, but rather on their wives, Penelope and Jimena. Both women have come to be prototype figures who represent the loyal, faithful, passive but supportive wife whose love for her husband is exemplary and unquestioned. In La tejedora de su';ios (The Weaver of Dreams) (1952), Antonio Buero Vallejo asks what life might have been like for Penelope during Ulysses' twenty-year absence, whereas Antonio Gala in Anil/os para una dama (Rings for a Lady) (1973) speculates on Jimena's life after the Cid's death.3 Buero and Gala, while not altering the epic and mythic content, delve into a neglected inner component ofthe stories, and show how each woman might have suffered and dreamed, and how each might have sought fulfillment in love. The women are thus presented in a human dimension which is in conflict with their stereotyped obeisant roles, and as a result they become victims of their particular status as "the wife of a hero." They experience the dual conflict of coping with both the external demands of their roles and the personal needs for self-identity, freedom, and self-fulfillment as human beings and as women. La /ejedora de suenos, Anillos jJara una dama 311 Both dramas humanize and at the same time demythologize the legends, since Buero Vallejo and Gala call into question the totality of the truth of the myths. The Homeric myth of Ulysses, the epic poem of the Cid, and the subsequem re-creations of both works are products of the artistic mind and belong to the realm of mythic thinking. As is typical of such products of a patriarchal mode, the masculine aspect is glorified at the expense of the feminine - a device teomed by Freud, with reference to the manifest content of dreams, "displacement of the accent."4 Commenting on this emphasis on the masculine, Joseph Campbell has noted that throughout all patriarchal mythologies: The function of the female has been systematically devalued, not only in a symbolical cosmological sense, but also in apersonal, psychological. Just as her role iscut down, or even out, in myths of the origin of the universe. so also in hero legends. It is, in fact, amazing to what extent the female figures of epic, drama, and romance have been reduced to the status of mere objects; or, when functioning as subjects, initiating action of their own, have been depicted either as incarnate demons or as mere allies of the masculine will.5 Buero Vallejo and Gala effectively unmask the hidden face of the myths by penetrating beyond the exterior, official version of History which supports the patriarchal traditions and maintains mythic thinking. Both demythologize what is accepted as "historical" by offering a new point of view and pursuing it to its very logical and human conclusion. Reminiscent of Unamuno and his intrahistoria, the dramatists present official History as incomplete, inaccurate, and lacking in a human dimension. Jimena captures this discrepancy between truth and History when she notes that the actors who represent astory (his/aria) without costumes, props or the appropriate dialogue which corresponds to the story may be perceived as crazy. But they are madder who believe that they are acting out...