La maternidad imaginada en Aloma y El carrer de les camèlies, de Mercè Rodoreda

As it has been indicated by critical readers of Mercè Rodoreda (María Asunción Gómez, Jaume Martí-Olivella y Geraldine Nichols, to name just a few), motherhood and mothers are important figures in her work. In Aloma (1938, rewritten in 1968 and republished in 1969) and El carrer de les Camèlies (1966) this topic becomes particularly interesting because the relationship between mother and son or daughter never appears in the diegesis, it’s an “imagined motherhood”. This figurations of the future child intertwine constantly with the imagination of the space in a movement of approach and distancing in different levels, generating an intersection between domestic and urban spaces and female body thresholds. Focusing on critical places and moments (pregnancies, abortions), we will be able to observe how these two aspects put the protagonists and their imagination in motion.