Over the last two centuries, approximately since the birth of the Victorian era, many women

novelists, short-story writers, poets, playwrights, screenwriters and directors have approached
the matter of female characterisation from numerous different angles and from varying
standpoints whilst simultaneously experimenting with innumerable diverse styles and inventive
techniques. In recent times, however, none have been so candid, so revolutionary and so
innovative in their approach as the esteemed voices of Mercè Rodoreda and Icíar Bollaín. Both
Rodoreda – the Catalan novelist turned short-story writer – and Bollaín – the Madrilenian
director – present us with fictional worlds in which female protagonists are isolated, subjugated
individuals. The archetypal image of the silenced woman appears frequently – women that
have been oppressed by society, by men and often even by themselves. Many are scarred by
past experiences, whether it be the agony of forsaken love or the torment of an abusive
relationship, and are therefore hesitant and reluctant to effect change in their lives for fear of
the emotional repercussions. These women retreat, clutching an image of where they believe
they ought to exist in society. They are self-conscious, passive characters with little to no self-
awareness and no true identity. Although both authors regularly include secondary female
characters in their work who stand as the definitive antithesis to all of the characteristics listed
above, the presence of said characters generally only serves to increase and further highlight
the estrangement of the protagonist.
This essay will first of all compare and contrast female characters in the works of
Rodoreda and Bollaín as well as analyse how they progress and develop – if at all they do
progress and develop – in terms of the defining characteristics and personality traits cited
above. That is to say, to analyse how females are presented. Secondly, it will examine the
similarities and dissimilarities in the literary, narrative and cinematic techniques by which the
two authors characterise females in their work. That is to say, to explore the means by which
female characters are presented. In order to fulfil the objectives set out by this introduction,
this paper will anchor its analysis in two of Rodoreda’s short stories – ‘La salamandra’, from the
1967 collection Mi cristina y otros cuentos,1 and ‘Lluvia’, from the 1978 collection Parecía de
seda y otras naracciones2 — and in one of Bollaín’s films: Te doy mis ojos.3

Often, the first encounter that the reader or spectator has with a particular figure in a short
story, novel, play or film is pivotal in establishing that individual’s character. Aspects such as
their psyche, their temperament, their place within society and their standing in relation to the
other characters must be instilled into the spine of the narrative. As Docherty argues: ‘The first
impression cannot be underestimated, for it is upon this integral foundation that all subsequent

1
Edition: Mercè Rodoreda, Cuentos completos (Madrid: Fundación Santander Central Hispano, 2002)
2
Edition: Mercè Rodoreda, Cuentos completos (Madrid: Fundación Santander Central Hispano, 2002)
3
Edition: Icíar Bollaín, Te Doy Mis Ojos (Alta Films, 2003)
action, thought and speech will be contextualized and criticised’.4 Rodoreda’s ‘La salamandra’,
for example, wastes little time in forming the figure of the subservient, silenced woman as its
female protagonist: ‘Aparenté no estar asustada, me levanté en silencio’ (p. 259). Tellingly, the
young girl’s first appearance in the narrative is one in which she is being physically mistreated:
‘Se plantó frente de mí con los brazos abiertos de par en par para que no me escapase’ (p. 259).
Frequent references to fear and submissiveness in this opening passage cement the
subordinate place of the female within this fictional society right from the very outset. Bollaín’s
Te doy mi ojos, on the other hand, features a comparatively less explicit opening sequence, in
terms of characterisation, during which the audience are left to infer Pilar’s characteristics from
visual and auditory cues. As she frantically dashes through her apartment gathering essential
belongings, her fear of what might happen should her husband come home to find her leaving
is truly palpable. Jumpy camerawork and fast-tempo orchestral music are well utilised by
Bollaín to reflect the panicked atmosphere in this scene. Pilar’s speech is shaky as she tries to
rouse her son: ‘Juan, Juan, ¡Despiértate! Por favor, ¡despiértate!’. Afterward, whilst travelling
on the bus, her body language speaks volumes for her character: she pulls her knees into her
chest, essentially curling up into a protective ball. Although the audience does not immediately
know for what reason she is fleeing her home, it is glaringly obvious from the outset that Pilar is
an oppressed female character.
The chaotic introductory sequence of Te doy mis ojos contrasts greatly with the calm,
calculated opening of Rodoreda’s ‘Lluvia’ in which the protagonist, Marta, is found tidying her
apartment ahead of the arrival of her date. Unlike the two female characters already
mentioned, Marta seems to be in relative control of her world: ‘Todo estaba en orden’ (p. 327).
Unlike Bollaín, who relies heavily on kinesics in her opening sequence, Rodoreda introduces
Marta’s character through carefully controlled and detailed illustration. For example, the
fastidious description of Marta’s apartment – ‘Delante del arca de novia, a la derecha de la
puerta, una botella de coñac y dos copas brillantes’ (p. 327) – is reflected in her meticulous
cleaning: ‘Todo había sido escrupulosamente rascado, desempolvado, hecho nuevo’ (p. 327). As
Sobrer points out, however, obsession is often a defence mechanism in Rodoreda, which allows
her characters to avoid confronting reality and, more importantly, he argues, to avoid
confronting the past.5 Marta’s obsessive behaviour therefore betrays her seemingly reposed
demeanour. Clearly, she too has receded into herself, unwilling to face the unfathomable and
crushing realities of life.

4
Thomas Docherty, Reading (Absent) Character: Towards a Theory of Characterization in Fiction (Gloucestershire:
Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 158
5
Josep Miquel Sobrer, ‘Gender and Personality in Rodoreda’s Short Fiction’, in The Garden Across the Border, ed.
by Kathleen McNerney and Nancy Vosburg (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1994), p. 189
In all three of our chosen texts, the female protagonist is acutely mindful of how others
perceive her. The protagonist in ‘La salamandra’ tells us: ‘No podía moverme, porque andar en
el invierno es andar delante de todo el mundo y yo no quería que me viesen’ (p. 261). Whereas
Marta, for her part, worries profusely over which book to place on her nightstand so as to
impress Alberto: ‘Fue hasta el escritorio para escoger un libro que dejar sobre la mesita. ¿Cuál?
¿Otelo? Tal vez Alberto al ver al alcance de la mano un libro demasiado solemne persaría: “Es
una esnob”’ (p. 328). Similarly, Pilar does not appear to be confident in her own choices and
seeks the approval of others. In the scene where she meets Antonio down by the river, she is
still dressed in her work clothing. Noticing Antonio’s critical expression, Pilar gestures towards
her outfit, asking: ‘¿Te gusta?’. Antonio sidesteps the question with his own, and Pilar simply
hangs her head shamefully and sighs: ‘No te gusta’.
The protagonists’ common lack of self-belief is deceivingly one-dimensional and actually
alludes to a much bigger issue: subjugation. All three of the main characters are marginalised in
one form or another. The young protagonist of ‘La salamandra’, for instance, has been
estranged since birth because the village people believe her mother was a witch: ‘La gente del
pueblo me miraba como si no me viera’ (p. 260). When she and the older man are caught
committing adultery together, she is declared guilty of bewitching him. She is burned at the
stake whilst he suffers no punishment, despite the fact that it was he who pursued her. Such
unjust persecution, according to Nichols, is indicative of a purely patriarchal society in which
women will forever be inferior, in all spheres, to their male counterparts.6
Rodoreda and Bollaín weave these aspects of patriarchy all throughout their work. This
resourceful technique does not feature so prominently as to overpower the text but instead
allows for the unique opportunity for female protagonists to be characterised by their
oppressor – which is to say, in this case, by men. In ‘La salamandra’, for example, the young
protagonist is repeatedly physically assaulted by male characters: ‘uno de ellos me dio un
puñetazo en mitad de la cabeza’ (p. 261). Although physical violence of this sort does not
directly feature in Te doy mis ojos, there are many indicators that it takes place off-screen.
During one of her and Antonio’s arguments after she returns home from having lunch with her
new friends, Pilar lowers her head and instinctively raises her hands to protect her face when
Antonio suddenly moves towards her. Note also that almost the entire scene is filmed in a high-
angle camera shot, accentuating Pilar’s small, intimidated character. Furthermore, the extreme
close-up shots and tight framing typical of Bollaín allow the audience to literally read the fear
from her face, and the low-key lighting creates appropriately menacing shadows.
On account of being female, the protagonist in ‘La salamandra’ is dehumanised by her
male captors: she is dragged from her home like a wild animal and thrown ‘como una rama más
encima del montón’ (p. 261). The objectification of women also occurs in Te doy mis ojos, most

6
G.C. Nichols, ‘Writers, Wantons, Witches: Women and the Expression of Desire in Mercè Rodoreda’, Catalan
Review, 2, 2, (1987), 171-180, p. 175
often during the scenes involving the men attending the domestic abuse workshop. In one such
scene, one attendee claims that it is a wife’s duty to sexually satisfy her husband every night
after he arrives home from work and that refusal to do so is a fallacy that warrants: ‘algún tipo
de reacción violenta’. In both of these texts female characters are not characterised by men as
females at all but, rather, as objects to be manipulated and controlled. An excellent example of
this appears in ‘La Salamandra’, when the older man assures the young, vulnerable protagonist
that ‘Mi mujer eres tú, sólo tú’ (p. 259), which is exactly the same phrase with which she later
hears him reassure his wife.

As a result of continual physical and psychological oppression, the female protagonists are
afraid to articulate desire. They are reluctant to reach out and pursue their dream for fear of
the consequences failure could bring. Raspall writes: ‘Rodoreda’s short fiction features
oppressed women who convince themselves that what they desire is antithetical to them’.7
Marta desperately longs to re-experience a love like the one she shared with her former lover.
However, when she finally finds a young man who she thinks might be suitable, she panics and
flees, persuading herself that he could never fulfil her expectations: ‘El amor de verdad había
pasado […] Y ahora, Alberto. Un gran reposo, sí, pero… Nada más alrededor’ (p. 329).
An important particularity to note at this point in the short story is the sudden change in
narrative voice. The anonymous, third person narrator is suddenly replaced by a first person
narrator – Marta herself. This switch back and forth occurs repeatedly in ‘Lluvia’ and is in fact a
hallmark of Rodoreda’s writing style. Many critics, including Cuenca, have even likened
Rodoreda’s technique to the trademark ‘transconscious oscillation’ of T. S. Eliot’s poetry.8 In
terms of characterisation, this fluid, careful shift between Marta’s internal and external
environment allows the reader to explore her psychological condition in the context of her
outer world, thus broadening her density as a character. However, whilst the movement inward
is inviting and fluent, the movement outward is often cold and abrupt. When Marta feels she
has revealed too much, she shuts the reader out, simultaneously creating distance and
underscoring her isolation once more. Arnau explains that Marta ‘No confía a nadie su
inquietud’.9
In comparison to Bollaín – for whom the camera is the sole, omnipresent narrator – who
must characterise predominantly by means of the visual, Rodoreda has a much more extensive

7
Eulàlia Miret i Raspall, ‘Comments’, in Mercè Rodoreda: A Selected and Annotated Bibliography (1963-2001), ed.
by M. Isidra Mencos (Maryland: The Scarecrow Press Inc., 2004), p. 74
8
Maria Josep Cuenca, ‘Mecanismes conversacionals en la narrativa breu de Mercè Rodoreda: el diàleg monologat’,
in Actes del primer simposi internacional de narrativa breu, ed. by V. Alonso, A. Bernal and C. Gregori (Barcelona:
Publicaciones de l’Abadia de Montserrart, 1998), p. 403
9
Carme Arnau, ‘Los cuentos de Mercè Rodoreda: espejos y espejismos’, in Cuentos completes, by Mercè Rodoreda
(Madrid: Fundación Santander Central Hispano, 2002), p. 29
set of literary tools with which to develop her characters. Moreover, Marta’s momentary inner-
debates, as well as the first person narration in ‘La salamandra’, finally gives voice to the
otherwise silenced and oppressed female characters in Rodoreda’s short stories. The
monologue-style narration affords the protagonists a chance to enunciate their thoughts
candidly and to express desire, although, as per usual, they shy away from tackling the
problems that confine them. Rosenthal concurs, arguing that although there is intense ‘inner-
life’ in Rodoreda’s female characters, ‘there is a profound lack of introspection’.10
In Rodoreda, then, desire is thwarted by a fear of disappointment so great that it
ultimately negates the point in even trying. Marta, in justifying her choice to leave, concludes:
‘Si después él te deja te sentirás más sola todavía’ (p. 329). Bollaín constructs this defeated
female character in much the same way as Rodoreda in that fear also governs Pilar’s life
choices. Pilar is hesitant to leave Antonio because she is afraid of taking the leap into emotional
and economic independence. When her sister advises her to leave him, Pilar retorts: ‘¿y de qué
vivo?’.
In spite of all this, however, it is only just that one acknowledge that both Pilar and
Marta have moments in which they exhibit uncharacteristic decisiveness and bravery. For
example, when Antonio pleads Pilar to take him back she authoritatively tells him: ‘Pero tienes
que cambiar de verdad’. Similarly, Marta briefly confronts her demons on several occasions in
‘Lluvia’: ‘Pero ella tenía un pasado. Un día u otro tendría que confesar que había hecho una
locura’ (p. 331). When questioned on Pilar’s character, Bollaín herself admitted: ‘She had an
ability to show vulnerability but also an ability to be brave, too’.11 Unfortunately for both
protagonists, these periods of self-belief are fleeting. Rosenthal’s observation, then, that
‘Rodoreda’s characters come frustratingly close to realising their power, but then retreat,
afraid’ (p. 10) proves not only applicable to Rodoreda’s characters, but is an accurate reflection
on the female protagonist of Bollaín’s film, too.

Whatever the situation may be, it is clear that all three protagonists live in a world where a
prevailing rhetoric dictates what a woman can and cannot do. In some texts these social codes
are easily discernible, such as in ‘La salamandra’, whereas in others they go unspoken and exist
beneath the surface. Hence, female characters in Rodoreda and Bollaín are divided between
those who obey the code and those who do not. This schism raises the issue of the traditional
woman versus the modern woman in both authors. Medel-Bao states that in Bollaín’s film: ‘Hay

10
David H. Rosenthal, ‘Translator’s Foreword’, in My Christina and Other Stories, trans. by David H. Rosenthal
(Minnesota: Greywolf Press, 1984), p. 9
11
Matthew Arnoldi, Hitting Back at Domestic Abuse [online]. Available at: http://iofilm.co.uk/hittingbackat-
domesticabuse [Accessed 21/12/2015]
una lucha entre la preservación de los valores tradicionales y la evolución de los de la
modernidad’.12
In Te doy mis ojos, the opposing sides of this struggle are personified in two of the
secondary female characters. Aurora, Pilar’s mother, wishes that Ana be married in a big church
wearing a traditional white dress. Ana refutes this idea, claiming: ‘No la quiero y no me gusta’.
As Nichols states: ‘Feminine characters who triumph are those who imprint their desire on the
world’ (p. 172). It is Ana’s very ability to articulate desire that sets her character apart from that
of the three female protagonists discussed in the previous paragraph. Inversely, after the
audience learn that Aurora herself was involved in an abusive relationship with Pilar’s father, it
soon becomes apparent that she has suffered from and been influenced by the same
oppression as her daughter. Following the death of Pilar’s father, Aurora still did not find
fulfilment, remaining so scarred by her experience of loneliness that she has become utterly
convinced of the impossibility of women existing independent of men. When Ana advises Pilar
that she would be better off without Antonio, Aurora indignantly retorts that ‘Una mujer nunca
está mejor sola’. In both authors, the contrast of traditional and modern women is used to
epitomise the struggle between oppression and subjugation on one side and individuality and
free will on the other.

By the end of each of the three texts, only one character has managed to surmount (for the
time being, at least) subjugation: Pilar. After physically transforming into a salamander in an
attempt to escape her marginalised existence, the protagonist in ‘La salamandra’ instead finds
herself just as — if not more — oppressed than before. She suffers the same physical abuse –
‘dos chicos me vieron y empezaron a tirarme piedras y puñados de polvo’ (p. 264) and
experiences the same estranged isolation: ‘no sabía si aún era una persona o tan sólo era una
alimaña pequeña, o si era mitad persona mitad alimaña’ (p. 264). As Arnau contends, all her
metamorphosis seems to have achieved is to produce a reincarnation of the same imprisoned
and miserable femininity that maimed her existence previously.13 Nichols writes: ‘Even when
her lost souls appear momentarily satisfied with what their lives have wrought, thereafter
comes the moment of shattering realisation’ (p. 174). For Marta, this moment occurs upon her
return to the apartment when she symbolically observes that ‘Todo estaba igual’ (p. 332).
Having once again refused to ‘take the leap’, she is forced to retreat back into her life of
loneliness and despair. Pilar, however, with the help of Ana and her new group of friends,
eventually becomes confident enough to give voice to and to act upon her desire. In a polar-
opposite recreation of the first scene of the film, Pilar confronts Antonio before leaving once

12
Jordi Medel-Bao, ‘Cuando el amor quiere decir dependencia’, in Congreso virtual sobre historia de las mujeres
[online], ed. by M. C. Espinosa and J. Antonio López. Available at: http://www.revistacodice.es/publi_virtu-
ales/i_con_h_mujeres/documentos/comunicaciones/comuMedelBao.pdf [Accessed 21/12/2015], p. 11
13
Carme Arnau, ‘Mercè Rodoreda: la mujer marginada’, Destino, 11, 2065, (1977), p. 46
again: ‘No te voy a querer nunca más. Haz lo que quieras, me da lo mismo’. Although there is
no way to tell whether Pilar’s new-found courage will last or whether it is just another
ephemeral episode, the gradual evolution of her character, as opposed to the sudden
epiphanies of the other two protagonists, would seem to suggest the former.

In the works of Rodoreda and Bollaín, female characterisation is of the utmost importance. It is
the circumcentre about which all else orbits and the cornerstone upon which the entire text is
constructed. Both authors have developed and perfected their own distinct style when it comes
to depicting feminine identity in the fictional world. Rodoreda’s unconventional narrative
technique grants the reader access to the most exclusive spaces of her characters’
consciousness whilst her punctilious description forces the reader to take note of the most
banal details. For Rodoreda, it is these subtle features that are indicative of true character. In
the opinion of Bollaín, on the other hand, it is the kinesic elements such as body language that
are the strongest indicators of a person’s character. Her extreme close-up shots and usage of a
hand-held camera create a feeling of intimacy between audience and character. Thus, the need
for inner-monologues such as the ones that feature in Rodoreda’s short stories is negated,
because Bollaín’s characters’ thoughts and feelings are always captured by her camera, clearly
etched across their face.
However, although they may differ in terms of execution, both styles nonetheless unite
together to produce the same effect. The women of Bollaín and Rodoreda are subjugated
members of humanity who are manipulated, abused and mistreated all on account of being
female. Whether drawn from society or from somewhere within themselves, a deep-seated set
of values dictates what these characters can and cannot do. Desire, the ultimate expression of
individual will, is obstructed, repressed and abolished. Unless help arrives from an external
source, like in the case of Pilar, these women will forever remain hopelessly trapped in despair,
in isolation and, above all, in oppression.
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