María de la Cinta Ramblado Minero
The production of texts by Spanish women writers which focus on mother-daughter relationships during the period 1940s-1990s reflects the different attitudes towards generational opposition and interaction between women traditionally educated to be the self-sacrificing angel in the house and their daughters, who attempt to integrate the private and the public in a period beginning with the desarrollismo of the 1960s, continued with the Transition to democracy and ongoing today.
From this socio-historical perspective, this article aims to analyse two novels, by Maruja Torres and Lucía Etxebarria respectively, in which the mother-daughter bond plays a pivotal role in the construction of the female subject. The objective is to show that such a relationship is affected by the turbulent history of Spain in the 20th century and by the changes, for better or worse, experienced by women since the Second Republic (1931-1936) to the present day.