Love and Failure in Barcelona: Three Generations
Theme: Love
The research focuses on the love lives of the protagonist characters. The research results are not as expected. It is also largely a novel about failure, both personal and collective.
Argument
Mundeta Jover, married, only explains how her life was altered by an abortion in a relationship with a student, “Victor loved”, the birth of her daughter until the death of her husband. Mundeta Ventura shows the difficulties that now exist to move in society, her courtship with Ignacio Costa, and the vicissitudes her husband will find from the Civil War. Mundeta’s relationship with George Soter shows events of obsession when he made some decisions about their lives. The personal story becomes the story of three women. Also, a chronicle of the time from the late nineteenth century until the 1970s of the twentieth century.
Personality
Characters can be primary or secondary. Protagonists have goals and give rise to action, and help children achieve or hinder the objective. They are characterized through the narrator or other characters, how they dress, environment, etc.
Protagonists: Three women from different periods: Influencer Mundeta Jover, mother Mundeta Ventura, daughter Mundeta Claret. Having the same name and title incorporates a vision of unity.
Space
Located in Barcelona. It is not just the setting to frame history and evolution but an element with its own significance. It is also in constant transformation.
- The Jover: Late nineteenth century and early 20th century. Described in great detail behind closed doors and shown on the outside “from the balcony.” City expansion. Changes after the demolition of the walls and the birth of the Eixample.
- The Ventura: City in crisis, political events that lead to the convulsed Civil War. She lives beyond the facts. In the early thirties, she enjoyed the opulent environment, the city has experienced years of economic prosperity.
- Clarity: Gray and decadent, chaotic, anarchic, disdain for artistic buildings. She lives in the back of the press.
The three women feel connected to the city. The perception differs throughout the novel. They live in the Eixample as a most active area, as George says, “Sotero are Rateta of Eixample.” Areas of clandestine love are outside. Jover discovers the Citadel park and Barcelona, while Ventura walks through the Ribera neighborhood, Las Ramblas, and Claret walks the Arrabassada road to the top “episode Meublé.” These added spaces, where the personification of hypocrisy. Ventura knows that two men will be part of her life, Juan and Ignacio; the first rejected for love, the second well valued. Ventura prefers Arrabassada between Valldoreix, which is known to love but Ignacio dies.
Time
Historical time is often presented through hidden allusions. The anarchist bombings of November 8 at the Liceu in 1893 appear. The bomb explosion episode where Francisco Porras saves struck Catalan society. Jover will live through the loss of Cuba and the Philippines, Tragic Week, and World War I, but she will only be concerned when Francisco’s status is affected. March 17, 1938: the most intense bombings in Barcelona during the Civil War affect the population that was already sinking into conflict (Ventura thinks that her husband is in arrears). Claret lives through the student struggles of the last years of the Franco dictatorship. She participates in the Constitutional Union of Democratic Students. Roig thinks it had made a marked retrospection of their generation. There is a “back to past events and disordered events.”
Structure
The Story of Jover was part of the book Good Clothes and Little Soap, and was used as a starting point. It has a complex construction, not a traditional division into differentiated chapters. It is structured externally in sequence.
- Novel with Claret’s life journey that began on March 17, 1983, in italics.
- Following sequence, separated by blank spaces, where the three women tell their story. First fragment: Jover’s diary, December 6, 1894. Second: to know Claret, late 1960s. Third: describes Ventura, April 14, 1931.
- Resume search for their initial episode: Ventura looking for a man among the dead from the bombing, in italics.