Letters to Liberty. Intimacy, subjectivities and desires in Elena Fortún and Carmen Laforet writers’ correspondence (1947-1952)

Abstract

These lines present some patchworks from the correspondence of Elena Fortún and Carmen Laforet between 1947 and 1952 though a gender approach. The proposal is to analyse part of their personal history, hidden, through their trajectories from an intimate and a subjective point of view. The main sources uses in this research are the letters they sent to each other, published in a production edited by Cristina Cerezales, Carmen Laforet’s daughter. During the post-war turbulent times in Spain, Carmen Laforet and Elena Fortún expressed their deep mutual admiration, in personal and professional spheres. Besides this, they shared their wishes, their links with family, some writing avatars and the difficulties of being women’s. Against gender policies under Francoism and Peronism, the female writers articulated their freedom and emancipation requests. In the article it is highlighted the contradictions more prominent that these female writers lived in those years according to their maternal experience, their difficulties on literature world as women’s and their intimate perceptions on religion and death.