The House in Ruins: Space and Feminine Subjectivity in Nada by Carmen Laforet

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of space in Nada (1944) by Carmen Laforet, focusing on its function in the construction of female subjectivity within the context of post–Spanish Civil War society. It argues that the house on Aribau Street operates not merely as a narrative setting but as a symbolic structure that embodies the moral, economic, and emotional deterioration of the period while shaping the protagonist Andrea’s experience. Drawing on Gaston Bachelard’s theory of space and Simone de Beauvoir’s reflections on gender, the article examines how spatial configurations—marked by darkness, confinement, and latent violence—function both as psychological projection and as a mechanism of oppression. Furthermore, the novel is interpreted as a variant of the female bildungsroman, in which the process of formation is defined by precariousness and critical distance rather than social integration. The study concludes that Nada constructs an aesthetic of emptiness in which space reveals the intersection between individual experience and historical crisis.