Abstract

SARDINAS FERNANDEZ, José Miguel. Árboles petrificados by Amparo Dávila: a short-story cycle on freedom. Connotas. Rev. crit. teór. lit. [online]. 2020, n.20, pp.57-79.  Epub Feb 15, 2021. ISSN 2448-6019.  https://doi.org/10.36798/critlit.vi20.306.

Árboles petrificados (1977), a short story collection by Amparo Dávila (Zacatecas, Mexico, 1928), could be considered a short story cycle. One of the features which support this hypothesis is based on the relation established by most of the protagonists, within the book, with their past. These characters think of their past as a refuge, when confronted with an intolerable present. The main purposes of this article are, firstly, to verify if this book is a short story cycle and, secondly, to determine if the past finally functions as the refuge the characters look for. To fulfill these objectives, the theoretical framework combines short story cycle theories with the functional classification of heroes of both Vladimir Propp (seeker-heroes and victim-heroes) and Claude Bremond (agent and patient roles). As a result of the analysis of setting time, narrator and characters in all the short stories of Árboles petrificados (twelve in total), the article concludes that the book works as a cycle and, that one of its most relevant characteristics is the gender and the role of its heroes: most of them are female and, they are victims looking for refuge in their past, which finally becomes a symbolic prison. This conclusion shows Dávila’s emphatic empathy to women characters of different social levels, despite her explicit refuse to be considered a feminist woman writer.

Keywords : Mexican short story; Amparo Dávila; short-story cycles; women characters; feminist sensitivity.