Domestic Horror and Gender Conflicts in the Narratives of Patricia Esteban Erles

This article is centred on the work of Patricia Esteban Erles, a noteworthy Spanish writer of fantastic narratives. More specifically, it addresses her use of domestic space in association with horror in constructing tales that highlight the lives and voices of women tormented by the conflicts between the sexes that mark the present age. Through the fragility of human relationships, both within the family and between couples, and using monstrous home environments soaked in cruelty, the representations of the feminine that run through her narratives reveal the perpetuation of models of women implanted by patriarchal discourse. With a view to going deeper into this topic, her books of short stories Manderley en venta (2008), Abierto para fantoches (2008) and Azul ruso (2010) are here analysed, along with her volume of micro-tales Casa de Munecas (2012). This stresses the novelty of her creativity of the fantastic, confronting the conservative ideology taken for granted in the Spanish cultural imagination.