Silence as a Form of Violence (and of Response): The Divided Self in the Fiction of Alba de Céspedes and Carmen Martín Gaite

Abstract

Silence as a Form of Violence (and of Response): The Divided Self in the Fiction of Alba de Céspedes and Carmen Martín Gaite

This article proposes a comparative reading of Quaderno Proibito by Alba de Céspedes (1952) and Entre Visillos by Carmen Martín Gaite (1958), two novels which, from different national contexts, interrogate the conditions of possibility of female subjectivity through silence and the forms of response it articulates. The analysis highlights how silence is resignified as a narrative strategy that makes it possible to imagine forms of agency within dispositifs of control.

Received: 2026/01/07

Admitted: 2026/04/22