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Document Details :

Title: Torn Lace
Author(s): PARDO BAZÁN, Emilia
Journal: Marriage, Families & Spirituality
Volume: 7    Issue: 1   Date: 2001   
Pages: 98-101
DOI: 10.2143/INT.7.1.2004536

Abstract :
Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921), born in La Coruña, Galicia, is one of the most influential women writers of nineteenth-century Spain. “Her eminence as a writer of fiction, essays, and literary criticism was universally recognized, even in her own day. While scholars have traditionally studied Pardo Bazán as a key figure in the Spanish naturalistic novel, they have recently begun to also recognize the fundamental contribution she made to Spanish letters through her experimentation with narrative structure and her exploration of other literary movements, such as spiritual realism and modernism. In addition, she is now credited with having played a major role in bringing the discussion of feminism to the forefront of intellectual and popular debate, through her fiction as well as through her essays.”
Torn Lace is one of several stories in which Pardo Bazán explores the notion that a seemingly insignificant action or even a small gesture can provide us with sudden insight into a person’s character. A generation after Pardo Bazán, modernist short story writers would extensively employ epiphany as an important structuring device in terms of both plot and theme. Here, an epiphany leads the protagonist to break off her engagement at the last possible moment. Such elements as the choice of the image of torn lace for the story’s title and the presentation of the protagonist’s narration as a confidence between women convey an explicitly feminine sensibility.” (Quotes and text excerpt taken from: Emilia Pardo Bazán: Torn Lace and Other Stories, New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1996)

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