Trauma and Resistance in the Short Story Corpus of Ana Maria Matute 1953-1962

Abstract

From 1953 to 1962 Ana María Matute Ausejo (b. 1926) published ten short story collections of and two additioinal stories.

The project focuses on three central tenets: first, the physical and psychological trauma created in the wake of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and General Francisco Franco's treatment of Spain as an internal colony; second, the plight of the socio-political sphere of Spanish life during the decades after the Civil War, particularly as it relates to the Republican vencidos, women and children; and third, resistance to power, to repression, to patriarchy, and to alterity in Matute's short story corpus. Due to the political climate in mid-twentieth century Spain, Matute could only couch her dissention to the Régime in a subversive manner by disguising her critiques covertly within short stories of ambiguous narrative content. Had she been more overt in her criticism she would have risked censorship, punishment, and possible imprisonment.

Conceiving post-War Spain as an internally colonized country has been explored before, but not through a reading of Matute's short stories. Analyzing this selection of short stories in this light offers the reader a new perspective on Matute studies because this corpus exposes a critique of the social, emotional, and physical traumas that existed in Spain in the mid-twentieth century. By evidencing her covert resistance to the Régime which caused the various traumas we visit a facet of Matute studies that has been relatively unexplored until this point.