Setting up the interlocutor: Two case-studies in the construction of self in 1930s Spain

This paper considers two related but contrasting self-narratives of 1930s Spain, that of Hildegart Rodríguez, the youthful sex reformer who corresponded with Havelock Ellis, and that of Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira, her mother. The narrative of Aurora arises out of her arrest for the murder of Hildegart in 1933, and is composed partly of her account of herself at the murder trial, and partly by the case-notes compiled by the psychiatrists at Ciempozuelos. The self-narrative of Hildegart consists primarily of her letters to Havelock Ellis, 1931-1933. The accepted view of Hildegart and her mother is that the latter was insane, and the former was sane. Yet the two of them display a comparable defensiveness in the way that they portray themselves to the world. In this paper I consider their respective accounts of themselves as the presentation of a 'life-history', and use the model of the interlocutor to read the investments involved in the presentation of such a narrative. I examine first the discourse of Aurora, where her paranoia is clearly evident (despite certain textual complications), and then the discourse of Hildegart. In looking at the daughter's narrative I shall consider how there is an unconscious presentation of a medical narrative, and how--when read through a psychoanalytic lens--the discourse reveals that Hildegart also suffered some level of disturbance.