Analysis of antipatriarchal discursive representations in literature through three works

matriarchy as an alternative form of exercising power

Abstract

This paper sets out to analyze the presence of alternative literary representations to the classic canons of patriarchy and, specifically, search for texts where a matriarchal order is constructed as a subversive form of exercising power. The interpretive dimension of women as protagonists/participants of the literary narrative is the one that centers the analyses carried out, extracting the archetypal connotations of the characters that articulate the story and their own relationships, which constitutes a critical evidence of realities that transmit implicit knowledge to the reader about the social existence. Although literature generates a negotiated fiction, its critical reading should not be carried out outside those sociological categories that allow us to unravel the world. After reviewing some theoretical concepts on the ideas of matriarchy, patriarchy and feminist criticism, three works have specifically been selected as outstanding examples of how creative tools can serve female empowerment and the transformation of the collective imagination: Lysistrata, a comedy by Aristophanes; One Hundred Years of Solitude, the novel par excellence by Gabriel García Márquez and The Country of Women, by Nicaraguan Gioconda Belli, one of the most prominent feminist writers in contemporary literature written in Spanish. The three works are intimately connected and represent, in turn, a plausible (re) conceptualization of the feminine experience aligned with feminist theories of difference. This last issue allows us to invite the reader to return to one of the classic debates of the contemporary feminist movement: to renounce or to exalt gender, finding in it, rather than a violent and oppressive social construction, an opportunity to change the world from a new scale of values ​​starring motherhood and care policy.