Mararía: traces of feminine subjectivation and Canarian identity in Rafael Arozarena's text

Abstract

Mararía is a novel published in 1973 by Rafael Arozarena, which became a must-read for all Canarian students who, from its pages, have discovered the life of a woman turned into a legend. Located in Femés (Lanzarote), the place where the woman on whom the novel is based actually lived, in times of the Franco dictatorship, the text portrays the living conditions of the island's population, the articulation of caciquil power and through its protagonist reels off the idea of ​​magical and tragic femininity on which one of the most fascinating female archetypes in Canarian literature will be built. I consider it relevant to carry out a historical and gender analysis that allows us to reflect on the construction of Canarian femininity through one of the fundamental texts of the literature of the islands in the 20th century.