Fortunata’s second chance
The rereading of Galdos’ tragic heroine in Almudena Grandes’ La madre de Frankenstein
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4312/vh.28.1.71-84Keywords:
Grandes, Fortunata, Pérez Galdós, National Episodes, Frankenstein‘s motherAbstract
Almudena Grandes takes the Galdos’ National Episodes as a model to create her own multi-novel saga, Episodes of an endless war. In Frankenstein´s Mother (2020), the last novel in this series which explores the Spanish postwar period, two particular techniques make Grandes, both a writer and a historian, Benito Pérez Galdós´s literary heiress. The first, a formal one, is her episodic and choruslike construction of the narration, where she gives a voice to anonymous characters in history and society; the second is her rereading of Fortunata and Jacinta, where she creates her heroine, María, as though as a mirror image of Galdos’ Fortunata.
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