Engendering Narrative Equality in Ángela de Azevedo's El muerto disimulado

In an affront to traditional narrative practice, Ángela de Azevedo posits a feminist discourse in El muerto disimulado by constructing a protagonist, Jacinta, who breaks with the traditional female role of passive object to take control of narrative and emplotment as the speaking subject. As the female voice strives to gain greater narrative authority in the play, the male and female characters struggle to come to a new understanding of their social and narrative selves. Consequently, the conventional notions of gender are in a state of unrest in both a social and a narrative context. Azevedo's objective, like that of all writers who are motivated by a desire to confront practices founded on unsubstantiated beliefs, is not to invent a women-centered narrative that sets woman above man, female above male, the feminine above the masculine, but to reveal the fictionality of the social behavior and the discourse that accompanies it. By creating a female protagonist with a strong personal voice, by reaffirming her own authority as the author of the text through Jacinta, and by imbuing her text with a unique sense of communal voice, Azevedo assures that her voice and the voices of her characters, regardless of their sex, play an essential and indispensable role in the creation of a narrative that marginalizes no one. (JPG)