UC Irvine

This dissertation project explores the idea of matrilineal genealogies and analyzes how 20th and 21st century Spanish films and texts expand the notion of motherhood to encompass unexpected figures and formulate unique kinship formations. Contemporary Spanish fiction serves as a particularly rich area of analysis for these research questions since the texts and films I evaluate in my project reject any type of universalizing prescription of maternal experience by offering alternative forms of knowledge production through nuanced interpretations of maternal practice. This stands in stark contrast to the prototypical figure of the Spanish mother which evokes imagery of the Catholic woman who, taking inspiration from the Virgin Mary, gladly and selflessly engages in domestic work and childcare at the service of her family and country. I consider the process of memory retrieval through writing and narration as integral to this sharing of maternal memory along matrilineal lines. This process manifests as a complication of the Demeter-Persephone myth in which the daughter and mother both speak, searching for each other, either through her memories or in substitute figures. The idea of intergenerational inheritance between women establishes the role of language of the mother and recognizes the ways that feminine subjectivity is formed and challenged by maternal practices. In this project, I also ask what factors can hinder the flow of matrilineal wisdom, creating gaps in the generational archive of maternal knowledge such as the influence of institutional motherhood, the absence of the mother, and patriarchal hegemony. All these topics are central elements for my research project which identifies how fictional representations of maternal practice can serve to fill in archival gaps as well as how reconfigurations of matrilineal genealogies constitute an alternative form of knowledge production. I first explore the idea of institutional motherhood and patriarchal motherhood before turning to the figure of the substitute mother, the concept of ghostly mother, and the potential for intergenerational narratives. My aim is to articulate a contribution to modern and contemporary Peninsular literary and film studies as well as motherhood studies.