Carmen Martín Gaite, lectrice de Marcel Proust Variations sur la mémoire et la mort dans Retahílas (1974) et El cuarto de atrás (1976)

One under-researched dimension of the Spanish novelist Carmen Martín Gaite is her reading of Proust. Her appropriation of Recherche is evident in her representation of remembrance, already present in Retahílas. In El cuarto de atrás, this influence develops into a fantastic rewriting of involuntary memory, which acts as an imaginary escape from the Franco dictatorship. The funereal imagery of Recherche is taken up in the leitmotifs of the “coffin-womb” and the book as “progeny.”