What if the goddess Athena, who sprang fully-grown
from Zeus's head and denied she had a mother, became
aware of the compelling existence of her other parent?
What if she discovered that her mother, Metis-first wife
of Zeus and "wiser than all gods and mortal men,"
according to Hesiod-was swallowed by her father and
continued to impart her wisdom to him from inside his
belly? Recent Spanish novels by women parallel this
hypothetical situation based on Greek myth by featuring
female protagonists who obsessively re-examine the lives
of their mothers, seeking to know and understand them.
In Mother and Myth in Spanish Novels, Sandra J. Schumm
examines six narratives by Spanish authors published
since 2000 that focus on a daughter's search to know
more about her matriarchal heritage: Carme Riera's La
mitad del alma, Lucia Etxebarria's Un milagro en
equilibrio, Rosa Montero's El corazon del tartaro,
Cristina Cerezales's De oca a oca, Maria de la Pau
Janer's Las mujeres que hay en mi, and Soledad
Purtolas's Historia de un abrigo. In each of these
novels, the protagonist realizes that failure to
integrate the loss of her mother into her life results
in the inability to define her self. Without
valorization of the maternal subject, the legacy of the
daughter is at risk-she is also objectified and
swallowed-and the whole society suffers. The daughters'
attention to their mothers in these novels is as if
Athena had finally recognized that her mother, Metis,
had been ingested by Zeus. The myth of Metis and Athena
becomes a metaphor of the daughter's quest toward
wholeness and individuation in these works; she begins
to understand that her maternal legacy is a source of
wisdom that has been obscured. These novels by Spanish
women strengthen the mother's voice, rescue her from
anonymity, and rewrite the matriarchal archetype.
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