Narrative and gender: on inequality and social justice in “Villette” by C. Brontë and “Insolación” by E. Pardo Bazán

Abstract

In this paper, two literary works are analyzed, reviewing the origins of the feminist movement and promoting a critique of patriarchal society, the division of roles and the marginalized conception of women at that moment. They are both critical texts that represent an isolated and defenseless character in a society dominated by rationality and the beneficence of the church; both novels reflect a naturally organized society in which gender inequality is concealed or invisible, disguised as a pure and simple matter of difference between the sexes; they represent a society in which the idealized feminine characteristics (beauty, delicacy, sensitivity) help to hide the authentic reality of male domination, including those in which the myth of incomprehension and the mystery that awaken women as a form of submission to masculine rationality dominates. Faced with such a situation, the woman is provoked to raise her voice differently, planting the seed to create a new subject with freedom to generate projects of a dignified life, regardless of sex. In the public sphere, the foundations are laid for the reconstruction of a society that does not artificially separate the public and private spheres and in which a new theory of justice prevails, based more on the plurality and difference of expectations, needs and goods.