Feminine and masculine archetypes in Carmen Martín Gaite’s Entre visillos. An analysis from ethnoliterature

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze from the perspective of ethnoliterature the novel Entre visillos (1958) by Carmen Martín Gaite in relation to the Spain’s social and cultural context in the 1950s. The objective of the work consists of studying the feminine and masculine archetypes that the novel projects, in connection with the gender-related models that National-Catholicism promoted at the time. Many of these models are still prevalent in Spain. For her the novel, as it encapsulated the socio-cultural context of the 1950s, had by itself, as a specific literary product, the power of impinging upon and re-constructing that social reality, especially by producing new archetypes of gender on which to offer alternate models of identity.