Los personajes femeninos en las novelas de Gabriel Miro

Gabriel Miró (1879-1930) perhaps one of the most important prose fiction writers of Spanish Post-Modernism, has been considered by modern criticism as the most refined stylist of Spanish prose of the early Twentieth Century. In spite of the fact that Miró wrote comparatively little (his complete works add up to less than 2,000 pages) his popularity in Spain and abroad in recent years is attested by the many editions and translations of his works and by the sizeable critical bibliography in comparison to his literary output. Most critical works on Mir6 have been focused on the syntax, lexicon and stylistics of the longer novels of Oleza.

Most critics have dismissed female characterization in the works of Mir6 as shallow and predictable. This is somewhat justified, since Mir6 in his earlier novelettes is heavily influenced by modernist tendencies, a fact that led him to create abstract and ethereal females rather than well developed characters.

In Miró’s two longer novels Nuestro Padre San Daniel and El obispo leproso, we see a marked change in direction. The portrayal of secondary female characters tends to improve as they became better sketched caricatures. The main female characters mature, as careful observation, interior monologues, and direct dialogue replace the technique of extatic description in the depiction of females in the earlier works. The thesis analyzes fifteen female characters in the works of Gabriel Miró including those in Las cerezas del cementerio, (1910) his first long novel; the ones in his novelettes: La palma rota (1910), Los pies y los zapatos de Enriqueta (1912), Dentro del cercado (1916) and Ñino y grande (1921); ending with a detailed analysis of the female characters of 'las novelas de Oleza', Nuestro Padre San Daniel (1921) and El obispo leproso (1926).