Aproximació als drames rurals de Caterina Albert/Víctor Català amb una perspectiva de gènere: temes, personatges i símbols

Abstract

Aquest treball aborda l'obra de l'escriptora catalana Caterina Albert (1869-1966) des d'una perspectiva de gènere. L'objectiu principal de l'estudi és el de donar valor a la literatura escrita per dones entre el final del segle XIX i l'inici del segle XX, en considerar que les obres escrites per aquestes representen un testimoni únic per conéixer la història de les dones narrada des de la seua pròpia experiència. En aquest sentit, l'obra de Caterina Albert, pel seu contingut i forma, mereix una especial atenció. Després de conéixer la biografia de l'autora i veure la lluita que ha d'establir amb l'entorn per poder dedicar-se a l'escriptura, l'aproximació als seus escrits ens fa veure que la literatura produïda per una dona no es pot separar de la seua condició de gènere. Al contrari, es tracta d'una gran font d'informació que hauria de ser estudiada a fons. Als seus escrits, aspectes inherents a la dona com la necessitat del matrimoni o el mite de la maternitat queden en entredit.

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of CaterinaAlbert/Víctor Català, this study arises with the aim of doing a new reading on the work of the authoress. The main goal of this study is to analyze her rural dramas through the genre perspective. This study seeks to enhance the role of women as writers, since her experience offers a vision about what the women were thinking in a period in which their voice was silenced. This work focuses on two questions: the relation that establishes the biography of the authoress with her work and the vision that it offers on different aspects of the feminine universe. The bibliography used for the achievement of the work gathers investigations that have been published from the eighties up to the present. Most of the studies revolve around the master piece of the authoress, Solitud. The difficulty of studying Caterina Albert is due to the fact that much has been written about her main novel, while few studies have been done on her other works. This study focuses on works that have been less studied, the rural drama, which are books dealing with stories of rural subject-matter. To study the life of the authoress, there has been used the biography that Josep Miracle wrote in1963. For the analysis of the works in genre perspective, it has been very important the work of Anne Charlon, La condition féminine dans la prose narrative féminine catalane (1900-1983). The books I have selected for the analysis are Drames rurals (1902), Ombrívoles (1904) and Caires vius (1907). In the first chapter «Vida i obra de Caterina Albert/Víctor Català», my intention was to show the connection that exists between the vital experience of the authoress and her work. The questions that are analyzed are these: the education, her opinion about the situation of the woman in her period and her vision on the artistic creation. In the second chapter «Anàlisi dels drames rurals en clau de gènere», an analysis of the works through the genre perspective has been conducted. This chapter presents three questions: topics, characters and symbols. The first part analyzes the topics related to the feminine question: marriage, maternity, sexuality, solidarity, solitude, old age and gender violence. The second part studies different types of characters according to the genre: models and anti-models. The third part investigates the symbols that the authoress creates and that are linked to femininity. The main conclusions illustrate that the literature written by women is a very valuable information source, since it allows us to know the vision that they had on the world in a time when their voices were silenced. The work of Caterina Albert shows the dissatisfaction of women opposite to the patriarchal system, because in her histories, she criticizes the situation of oppression that the woman suffers due to the domination.