The Spaces of Patriarchy in Rafael Chirbes’s En la orilla (2013)

Abstract

Rafael Chirbes’ 2013 novel En la orilla explores the devastation wrought on Spain by the global economic crisis. In the era of liquid modernity, as defined by Zygmunt Bauman, the need of capital to move freely, obliterating all obstacles in its path, weakens patriarchal family structures. Exterritorial elites enjoy a certain degree of freedom from the tyranny of strictly defined gender roles while those who cannot imitate the capital’s speed of movement remain tied to spaces of patriarchy. The characters of En la orilla realize that the growing fluidity of existence erodes boundaries between urban and rural spaces and blurs definitions of gender, but it does so only for as long as these changes serve the capital’s need to move freely.