CONSIDERATIONS ON GENDER, THE FEMALE BODY, AND SEXUALITY IN THE WORK OF ESPIDO FREIRE

Through her essays, Espido Freire has demonstrated a strong commitment to the study of gender, the body, and the sexuality of women. Moreover, the protagonists of her narrative works are women who suffer the effects of stigmatization due to oppressive social paradoxes that are conceived as though they were doxa. In many of her female characters, thus, we find the body as a culturally anguished construction along with a sexuality that sometimes appears repressed, sometimes veiled, and represented, in certain cases, in an exceptionally explicit manner. Therefore, we consider it necessary to elucidate some of the paradoxes that are developed and frequently questioned by analyzing gender, the body, and sexuality in the work of Espido Freire. (SR)